Astragalus californicus

Title

Astragalus californicus

Authors

Rupert C. Barneby

Scientific Name

Astragalus californicus (A.Gray) Greene

Description

85. Astragalus californicus

Commonly robust, but diffuse, with a woody taproot and shortly subterranean root-crown or caudex, villous-villosulous nearly throughout with fine, loosely ascending, spreading and incurved, or curly hairs up to (0.5) 0.6-1.1 mm. long, the herbage greenish-cinereous or canescent, the leaflets equally pubescent on both sides or more thinly so and sometimes medially glabrescent or even glabrous above; stems several or numerous, decumbent and ascending in clumps, (1.5) 2-5 dm. long, slender, pallid and leafless at base, becoming stouter and striate upward, simple or bearing spurs or branchlets at 1-3 nodes preceding the first peduncle; stipules (1.5) 2-6.5 mm. long, dimorphic, those at the lowest, leafless nodes connate into a closely amplexicaul, papery-scarious (fragile and easily ruptured) sheath, the median and upper ones submembranous, greenish becoming pallid in age, triangular-acuminate or -caudate, semiamplexicaul-decurrent, the margins of the commonly deflexed blades beset with a few clavate processes; leaves usually divaricate or recurved, 3—8.5 cm. long, all but the lowest subsessile, with 13—21 (23) narrowly oblong- or cuneate-oblanceolate, truncate-retuse or rarely obtuse, flat or loosely folded leaflets (4) 6-20 (23) mm. long; peduncles stiffly erect or incurved-ascending, commonly stout, (3) 6—14 cm. long, nearly always surpassing the leaf; racemes at first rather closely, soon loosely (10) 15—25 (30)-flowered, the flowers early spreading and at full anthesis declined or nodding, the axis elongating, 3—10.5 cm. long in fruit; bracts membranous or broadly membranous-margined, lanceolate or triangular, (1.5) 2—5 mm. long; pedicels densely villous, at anthesis ascending at a wide angle or arched outward, 1.3—2.3 mm. long, in fruit either recurved or straight and divaricate, little thickened, 2.2—3.5 mm. long; bracteoles 0-2; calyx 6.4-9.7 mm. long, silky-villosulous (especially at base) with white and some black or fuscous hairs, the oblique disc (1.2) 1.4—2.1 mm. deep, the tube obliquely cuneate at base, 5.2—7 mm. long, 3.5—4.5 mm. in diameter, the subulate- triangular or broadly triangular teeth (0.9) 1.2-3 mm. long, the ventral pair sometimes longest, the whole becoming papery, marcescent unruptured; petals ochroleucous or yellowish, immaculate; banner recurved through ± 45°, obovate- cuneate or rhombic-oblanceoiate, (11.5) 13—17.4 mm. long, 6—9.6 mm. wide, wings (11) 11.6-14.5 mm. long, the claws 4-6.4 mm., the linear-oblong or oblanceolate, obtuse, subtruncate or obscurely emarginate, slightly incurved blades 6.7-9.1 mm. long, 2-3.4 mm. wide, the inner margins undulate below the middle; keel (9.5) 10.1-12.4 mm. long, the claws 4.1-6.3 mm., the lunately half-obovate or obliquely triangular blades 5.1-6.8 mm. long, 2.5-3.5 mm. wide, incurved through 85-100° to the sharply deltoid apex; anthers (0.5) 0.7-1 mm. long; pod pendulous, stipitate, the straight, slender stipe 8-14 mm. long, the linear-oblong body 2.7-4.3 cm. long, 3.4-5 mm. in diameter, straight to quite strongly decurved, tapering at base into the stipe, contracted cuneately or acuminately at apex and finally cuspidate, laterally compressed, bicarinate by the cordlike ventral and the more slender, sometimes undulate dorsal sutures, the faces nearly flat when young becoming low-convex at maturity, the thinly fleshy, commonly mottled valves becoming papery, brownish, finely reticulate, densely to quite thinly or minutely strigulose, exceptionally glabrous, not inflexed; ovules (15) 19-25 (27); seeds brown or olivaceous, purple-speckled, smooth or sparsely pitted, somewhat lustrous, 2.4-3.4 mm. long.—Collections: 20 (v); representative: T. Howell 1351 (MO, ND, NY, ORE, UC, WS); L. F. Henderson 12,615 (ORE, WILLU); Heller 8082 (MO, NY); Ripley & Barneby 9633 (CAS, NY, RSA); Barneby 11,510, 11,516 (CAS, NY, RSA).