207 
normally acute at both ends and appearing diamond-shaped, short- 
petiolulate, 5-12 mm.-long, broader when short, densely silvery-silky. 
with fine and soft hairs which are rather loose and inclined to be... 
wavy. The type has rather long peduncies and acute leaflets but is > 
without mature fruit, but there can be no. mistake about its identity. . 
It has been uniformly referred to-A. glareosus which is a form. of A, 
inflexus with short stems:and belongs to the Columbia drainage. The 
stems are woody but slender, spreading flat on the ground and hug- . 
ging it closely as if rooting, with short internodes, mostly only a few 
inches long (rarely a foot long), caespitose. Stipules rather small be- 
low but often 1.5 cm. long above, triangular to oblong-lanceolate, hy- 
aline and veined with green, nearly smooth. Rather common from 
Monida Montana and central Wyoming and!the Laramie plains south- 
ward to New Mexico on the Pacific slope, and westward to the Mogol- 
lons of Arizona, and northwestward to the base of the Sierras at least 
as faras Reno Nevada, and throughout the Great Basin, and on the 
Snake river toward its head in southern Idaho. It grows in mountain 
valleys in moist meadows on gravelly knolls in sweet soil, Middle 
Temperate life zone, not in the Columbia Basin except on the upper 
Snake river. Nuttall's type-is a long-peduncled form from Wyoming, 
with narrow and acute leaflets, in flower, and with immature pods 
and with the characteristic silky pubescence closely appressed. The 
species has very variable pubescence but it is always silky even when 
short and appressed, bnt it is rarely as closely app.essed as in those 
species with pick-shaped hairs, and is finer than in most forms of A. 
Shortianus, and is without the peculiar woolliness of the A. inflexus 
group, the flowers also are paler and without the deep-red of inflexus 
which makes them appear bluer in dried specimens evén when they 
are as deeply colored (doubtless because there is more acid in the 
flowers and becomes bluer in contact with alkaline driers), but mostly 
they are purple-tipped only, while in inflexus the flowers are more or 
less tinged with red even when dry (showing a different chemical 
nature more like A. coccineus), the pods of inflexus even when nearly 
smooth have long and woolly hairs. = A r 
A. argophyllus blooms from May to September. There has been 
much confusion about it, Nuttall mixing it with A. Purshii, Torreyand 
Gray with A. glareosus. ; ; 
This species appears to hybridize with A. Purshii very rarely, the 
tinctus variety forming Astragalus argophyllus x Purshii, when the | 
pods are somewhat narrower. sparsely short-shaggy, with oval and 
normally obtuse small leaflets of the tinctus variety. Such forms are 
5412d Jones from Salina Canon Utah, 6054h Jones from Nagle’s ranch 
on the Kaibab Arizona, and other material from Miller canon in the 
Navajo Basin south of Price Utah. : a = = 
Astragalus argophyllus Var. Pauguicensis Jones Cont. 7 671 (1895) 
and 85 (1898). This has densely silvery leaves witk oval and obtuse 
small leaflets, and with linear-lanceolate pods about 2.5 cm. long and 
5-7 mm. wide, shortly acuminate, very much obcompressed, doubly 
sulcate ventrally and not at all dorsally, finely and closely appressed- 
pubescent. In meadows at Panguitch Lake Utah. A form with sim- _ 
ilar. pods 4 cm. long and with narrow leaflets like those of the variety 
Cnicensis is from Thistle Utah. ds l 
Astragalus argophyllus Var. Martini N. Var. Thisisavery con- 
densed form without peduncle or very short if any, with imbricated 
stipules, with elliptical to diamond-shaped and silvery-silky leaflets, 
the largest not 1 cm. long,and with claw-like pods hardly 1 cm. long 
and deeply corrugated, with both sutures narrow and a little raised — 
externally, not sulcate at either suture but a little obeompressed, 
ovate, the flat tip eg to erect, sparsely short-hairy. Soda 
Springs Idaho June 19 1901 eo. 
. ger peduncle [ collected at Park City Utah. 
1 Rev. Geo. W. Martin. A form with lon- 
