Astragalus Kentrophyta var. Jessiae

  • Title

    Astragalus Kentrophyta var. Jessiae

  • Authors

    Rupert C. Barneby

  • Scientific Name

    Astragalus kentrophyta var. jessiae (M.Peck) Barneby

  • Description

    94e. Astragalus Kentrophyta var. Jessiae

    Diffuse or prostrate, loosely matted, the plants 5-35 cm. in diameter, the longest internodes up to 4-15 (18) mm. long, the foliage becoming stiff and prickly in age, the stems and leaves strigulose with appressed or ascending, sometimes a few loosely spreading hairs up to 0.4-0.7 (0.8) mm. long, cinereous or greenish; stipules scarious, 1.5-7 (8) mm. long, the short lower ones connate into a bidentate sheath, the upper ones connate at base and drawn out into narrowly subulate or acicular, commonly rigid and divergent blades; leaves 10-17 mm. long,  5-foliolate, the linear-elliptic leaflets 4-10 mm. long, the terminal spinule (1) 1.5-2.5 mm. long; peduncles 1-6 mm. long; calyx 3.6-5.1 mm. long, the tube 1.6-2.5 (2.9) mm. long, 1.6-1.9 mm. in diameter, the teeth 1.9-3 mm. long; petals whitish, the keel-tip and sometimes the banner faintly pink- or lilac-tinged; banner 5.2—6.5 mm. long, 3—3.8 mm. wide; wings 4.8—6.1 mm. long, the claws 1.4-2.5 mm., the blades 3.2-4.4 mm. long, (1) 1.3—1.9 mm. wide; keel 3.6-4.9 mm. long, the claws 1.6-2.7 mm., the blades 2.1-2.8 mm. long, 1.3-1.6 mm. wide; pod lenticular or ovoid-lenticular, beakless or nearly so, 3-4.5 mm. long, 1.4-2 mm. in diameter; ovules 2 (3).—Collections: 13 (iv); representative: Maguire & Holmgren 26,234 (NY, WS); W. H. Baker 10,200 (ID, RSA); Ripley & Barneby 6526 (CAS, RSA); Payson & Payson 2568 (NY).

    Sandy bluffs, gravelly hilltops, gullied knolls, and dunes or dunelike sandy flats, apparently bicentric in distribution: locally plentiful on alluvial and rhyolitic soils at 2450-3000 feet along the south affluents of the Snake River in Owyhee County, Idaho, and immediately adjoining Malheur County, Oregon; and on shale or sandstone, 6000-6700 feet, in scattered stations within the Green River Basin in Sweetwater and Sublette Counties, Wyoming, extending east just across the Continental Divide to the head of the Sweetwater River in southern Fremont County.—Map No. 38.—June to August.

    Astragalus Kentrophyta var. Jessiae (Peck) Barneby in Leafl. West. Bot. 6: 154. 1951, based on A. Jessiae (Jessie Louisa Grant, 1882- , wife and botanical collaborator of Morton E. Peck) Peck in Leafl. West. Bot. 4: 180. 1945.—"Type: Peck No. 21,220, from a high gravelly slope 10 miles south of Adrian, Malheur County, Oregon, June 13, 1942."—Holotypus, numbered 21,226 and dated June 15, WILLU! isotypus, RSA!—A. tegetarius var. Jessiae (Peck) Barneby in Leafl. West. Bot. 6: 96. 1951.

    Kentrophyta montana |3 Nutt, ex T. & G., Fl. N. Amer. 1: 353. 1838.—No locality given, but doubtless collected by Nuttall in Wyoming.—Spm. authent., labeled "Kentorus montanus ß" and mounted on the same sheet with typus of K. montana, NY!

    Jessie’s kentrophyta is superficially and in most fine details closely similar to the preceding and following varieties. It differs from var. Kentrophyta in its more copious pubescence of decidedly two-armed hairs and its smaller or at least narrower fruits; and from var. ungulatus chiefly in the pod of subsymmetrically ovate rather than obliquely lanceolate outline. The strictly typical form of var. Jessiae, apparently endemic to the Bruneau Desert and vicinity, differs slightly from the Wyoming populations in its somewhat longer and more rigid stipules and calyx-teeth. No kentrophyta is known from the upper Snake River Plains, but one is to be sought on sandy plains and river bluffs in southeastern Idaho.