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Astragalus brandegeei
Astragalus brandegeei Porter
Brandegee's Milkvetch
Fabaceae (Pea family)
Synonym(s):
USDA Symbol: ASBR5
USDA Native Status: L48 (N)
"Low, very slender, often flowering the first season, sometimes as precocious seedling plants before the cotyledons have withered, but potentially perennial, with an ultimately woody taproot and shortly forking suffruticulose caudex, strigulose with appressed or narrowly ascending hairs up to 0.4-0.7 mm. long, the herbage cinereous or greenish-cinereous, the leaflets glabrous above; stems slender but wiry, mostly 1-10 cm., more rarely up to 4 dm. long, simple or commonly bearing short branches or spurs in the lower axils, when short then loosely tufted, and the leaves appearing subbasal due to shortening of all or most intemodes, when longer then diffuse or prostrate, with intemodes up to 3.5 cm. long." (bibref: 1813).
"The Brandegee milk-vetch is a peculiar little species of strong individuality, easily recognized by its few, distant, narrow leaflets and tiny, whitish flowers strung out on threadlike peduncles. It is very inconspicuous, easily overlooked or mistaken for a sterile seedling even at full anthesis, and the species may therefore be commoner than is generally supposed. It is well adapted to flourish in arid climates where rain falls at irregular intervals and in varying amounts from one season to another. Germination of the seeds may occur at any time during the warm months whenever moisture suffices. The young plants may bear flowers and fruits within a few weeks, then consisting of a filiform taproot and a simple, erect stem only a few centimeters high and still bearing green or only newly withered cotyledons at the base. A colony of such plants was found by Dr. William A. Weber (who generously forwarded for study his large collection, cited supra) in the valley of Conejos River in Colorado. This is, however, an unusual case, for ordinarily the parent plants, veterans of two or three years duration as shown by the lignescent taproot and branched caudex, may be discovered close at hand. Such older plants commonly flower in early spring, but in New Mexico, where summer rainstorms are the rule, they continue to grow and bear flowers and fruits well into September and probably until frost. The short, one- or two-flowered peduncles, which arise in subscapose fashion from crowded nodes low on the stems, are especially common on seedling plants and on the new growth of mature ones, giving place either abruptly or by gradual transition to the elongate peduncles characteristic of a later season. The banner in the early flowers is sometimes poorly developed." (bibref: 1813).
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Plant Characteristics
Duration: PerennialHabit: Herb , Subshrub
Leaf Arrangement: Alternate
Fruit Type: Legume
Size Notes: "Stems slender but wiry, mostly 1-10 cm., more rarely up to 4 dm. long." (bibref: 1813).
Leaf: "Stipules 1.5-4 (5) mm. long, the lowest deltoid, early becoming papery, fully amplexicaul and the contrapetiolar margins free or if shortly connate then only obscurely so (and less connate than adnate to the petiole-base), the upper ones progressively narrower, the uppermost lanceolate, herbaceous, free; leaves (1) 2-9 (15) cm. long, with slender petioles and 5-15 distant, linear-filiform, linear-oblong, or very narrowly elliptic, obtuse or subacute, involute or conduplicate, exceptionally flat leaflets (4) 6-23 mm. long, the terminal one longest." (bibref: 1813).
Flower: "Peduncles dimorphic, the early ones much shorter than the leaves, often subradical and commonly only 1-flowered, the later ones elongate, filiform, surpassing the leaves and up to 13 (17) cm. long, reclinate in fruit; racemes 1-5 (7)-flowered, the remote or distant flowers ascending in early anthesis, later declined, the axis (0) 0.5-5 (8) cm. long in fruit; bracts membranous, ovate or lanceolate, 1-2 mm. long; pedicels filiform, at anthesis 1.2-2 mm. long, in fruit spreading or declined, little thickened, 2-3.5 (4) mm. long; bracteoles 2, attached either at base of the calyx or beneath it; calyx 3-4.9 mm. long (or sometimes a little accrescent and longer in fruit), strigulose with white or white and a few black hairs, the disc 0.5-0.8 (1) mm. deep, the purple-tinged, campanulate tube 1.8-2.5 mm. long, 1.5-2.2 mm. in diameter, the subulate teeth 1-2.5 mm. long, the whole becoming papery, usually ruptured, marcescent; petals whitish, the banner veined and the keel tipped with dull lilac; banner abruptly recurved through 90 degrees, ovate- or suborbicular-cuneate, 4-7 mm. long, 3.5-5 mm. wide; wings 4.7-6 mm. long, the claws 1.5-1.9 mm., the lunately oval-oblanceolate or obtusely triangular, obtuse blades (3.2) 3.5-4.6 mm. long, 1.5-2.3 mm. wide; keel 3.6-4.4 mm. long, the claws 1.5-1.9 mm., the half-orbicular blades 2.2-2.8 mm. long, 1.5-1.9 mm. wide, abruptly incurved through 135 degrees to the deltoid, sometimes obscurely porrect apex, anthers 0.3-0.5 mm. long." (bibref: 1813).
Fruit: "pod pendulous or (when humistrate) ascending, sessile or nearly so, sometimes tapering at base into a necklike stipe 0.2-0.8 mm. long, the body obovoid- or oblong-ellipsoid, 1-1.8 cm. long, 3.5-5 mm. in diameter, straight or a trifle arched downward, shortly cuspidate at apex, slightly obcompressed, bluntly carinate ventrally by the prominent, gently convex sutures, flattened or shallowly and openly grooved dorsally, the thin, greenish or purple- dotted, strigulose valves becoming papery, brownish-stramineous, finely cross-reticulate, the septum nearly complete or partial, 1.2-2 mm. wide; seeds olive- or pinkish-brown, often purple-speckled, pitted or wrinkled, dull, (1.8) 2-2.7 mm. long." (bibref: 1813).
Bloom Information
Bloom Color: White , Purple , VioletBloom Time: May , Jun , Jul , Aug , Sep
Bloom Notes: "Petals whitish, the banner veined and the keel tipped with dull lilac." (bibref: 1813).
Distribution
USA: AZ , CO , NM , UTNative Distribution: "Widely dispersed but nowhere common, often occurring in scattered colonies of only a few plants, Colorado Basin from the Price River valley in Carbon County, Utah, south to the headwaters of the Verde River in Arizona; upper Gunnison Valley in Gunnison County, Colorado; upper Salt and Gila Rivers in extreme southern Navajo County, Arizona, and Gila County, New Mexico; relatively frequent on the barren crest of the Continental Divide in northwestern New Mexico, thence extending to the Conejos River in Conejos County, and the Arkansas River in Fremont County, Colorado; Pedernal Hills on the Pecos-Rio Grande divide in Torrance County, New Mexico." (bibref: 1813).
Native Habitat: "Arid, sandy or gravelly clay banks, flats and stony meadows, mostly in piņon- juniper woodland, sometimes in oak brush, rarely in yucca-grassland, most commonly on sandstone, occasionally on granitic or basaltic bedrock, 5400-8650 feet." (bibref: 1813).
Bibliography
Bibref 1813 - Atlas of North American Astragalus (1964) Barneby, Rupert C.Search More Titles in Bibliography
Additional resources
USDA: Find Astragalus brandegeei in USDA PlantsFNA: Find Astragalus brandegeei in the Flora of North America (if available)
Google: Search Google for Astragalus brandegeei
Metadata
Record Modified: 2020-12-07Research By: Joseph A. Marcus