Plant Database

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Plant Characteristics

Duration: Perennial
Habit: Herb
Leaf Arrangement: Alternate
Fruit Type: Legume
Size Notes: "Stems several or numerous, decumbent or weakly assurgent, (1) 2-3.5 dm. (or in occasional precociously flowering seedlings only 0.4 dm.) long." (bibref: 1814).
Leaf: "Stipules 2-4 mm. long, submembranous, purplish, the lowest early becoming papery and brow- ish, mostly broader than long, amplexicaul-decurrent around 1/2-? -the stem, the median and upper ones narrower, with triangular or lanceolate, mostly erect blades; leaves 4-9 cm. long, all petioled but the upper ones shortly so, with (11) 15-19 (23) oval, elliptic-obovate, or broadly oblanceolate, obtuse or shallowly retuse, flat leaflets (4) 5-18 mm. long." (bibref: 1814).
Flower: "Peduncles incurved-ascending, (3) 4-6.5 cm. long, shorter than the leaf; racemes loosely 5-9-flowered, the flowers ascending and declined in age, the axis 1.5-5.5 cm. long in fruit; bracts submembranous, lanceolate or lance-acuminate, 1.5-2.5 mm. long, commonly purplish; pedicels very slender, at anthesis ascending at a wide angle, 2-4 mm. long, in fruit usually straight and divaricate but sometimes arched or twisted following the orientation of the humistrate pod; bracteoles 0-2; calyx 6.7-7.8 mm. long, loosely strigulose with white and fuscous hairs, the subsymmetric disc 0.8-1 mm. deep, the tube 3.7-3.9 mm. long, (2.2) 2.9-3.3 mm. in diameter, the slenderly subulate teeth 2.8-4 mm. long; petals greenish-white, often tinged or veined with dull lilac; banner recurved through 60-90 degrees, ovate-cuneate or somewhat rhombic in outline, shallowly emarginate, 9.5-11 mm. long, 6-8.5 mm. wide; wings 8.6-9.5 mm. long, the claws 3.4-3.6 mm., the obliquely obovate, obtuse or obscurely emarginate blades 5.7-6.6 mm. long, 2.4-3.2 mm. wide, both incurved but the left one more strongly so and its inner margin infolded; keel 7.8-8.9 mm. long, the claws 3.5-3.8 mm., the lunately half-elliptic blades 4.7-6 mm. long, 2.1-2.8 mm. wide, incurved through 80-90 degrees to the triangular, subacute, often obscurely porrect apex; anthers 0.55-0.65 mm. long." (bibref: 1814).
Fruit: "Pod loosely spreading, declined, or (when humistrate) ascending, sessile on the slightly elevated receptacle, subsymmetrically ellipsoid or ovoid-ellipsoid, bladdery inflated, 2.5-4 cm. long, 1.3-1.7 cm. (or when pressed seemingly up to 2.2 cm.) in diameter, broadly obconic or rounded at base, contracted distally into a very short and obscure, deltoid, laterally flattened beak, otherwise a trifle obcompressed, shallowly sulcate ventrally, the thin, pale green but purple-cheeked, glabrous or strigulose valves becoming stramineous, lustrous, semitransparent, delicately cross-reticulate, the funicular flange 1-2 mm. wide; ovules (27) 30-39; seeds brown, smooth but dull, 2.4-3.1 mm. lon." (bibref: 1814).

Bloom Information

Bloom Color: White , Green , Purple , Violet
Bloom Time: May , Jun , Jul
Bloom Notes: "Petals greenish-white, often tinged or veined with dull lilac." (bibref: 1814).

Distribution

USA: ID
Native Distribution: "Sometimes in sagebrush, infrequent but locally plentiful along the upper Salmon River, from near Challis upstream about fifty miles, and (perhaps disjunctly) along the lower Lemhi River between Baker and Leadore, in Custer and Lemhi Counties, Idaho." (bibref: 1814).
Native Habitat: "Washes in gullied clay bluffs, steep eroded banks in canyons, and sand or gravel bars along streams, on shale, clay, or alluvial debris." (bibref: 1814).

Bibliography

Bibref 1814 - Atlas of North American Astragalus Volume 2 (1964) Barneby, Rupert C.

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Additional resources

USDA: Find Astragalus aquilonius in USDA Plants
FNA: Find Astragalus aquilonius in the Flora of North America (if available)
Google: Search Google for Astragalus aquilonius