227 
above and hoary below as also are the stems. Stipules large and very 
wide, veined, smooth, nearly 1 cm. long, sheathing below. Stems few 
prostrate to ascending, slender, hardly 1 dm. long. Peduncles and 
petioles with white, short, narrow hairs closely appressed. This was 
found growing among the junipers and pinons at the head of the 
Grand Wash south (and a little west) of St. George (Utah) in Arizona 
on the gravelly mesa, Lower Temperate life zone. It so closely re- 
sembled A. cibarius that I only collected a few specimens to show the 
locality. This place was above Pagumpa, the Wash joins the Colora- 
do at the abandoned Pierce’s Ferry. 
185 Astragalus malacus Gray Proc. Am. Acad. 7 336 (1868). Pods 
3-5 cm. long, shortly stipitate, much laterally flattened, about 7-8 mm. 
high and 2 mm. wide, chartaceous and but little fleshy, nearly straight 
to strongly arcuate, 2-celled except at very tip by a hyaline partition, 
but sulcate ventrally, and with that suture rather thick and raised, 
narrowly sulcate dorsally to the tip, sparsely shaggy with hairs 1-3 
mm. long which are spreading at a right angie, usually mottled on the 
surface, with cross-section linear-triangular, rather abruptly acumi- 
nate at tip into a flat and upcurved beak which varies from several 
times longer than wide or shorter or sometimes even deltoid, at other 
times with very long and subulate beak. papery when dry, densely set. 
Flowers about 2 cm. long, pink-purple on the blades, spreading and 
rather densely spicate. Banner oblanceolate. 7-10 mm. long, abruptly 
arched beyond the calyx teeth to 30-43 degrees, with sides reflexed 1 
mm, wide in the middle, about 3 mm longer than keel, white spot large, 
purple-veined. Wings linear, barely longer than keel, somewhat ar- 
cuate, about 1 mm. wide, and with rounded and horizontal tips. Keel 
about 5 mm. long, with straight base and then abruptly arched to 
erect, 3 mm. high, with tip blunt and rounded or truncate. Calyx tube 
about 7 mm. long, with sides about straight, almost truncate at base 
and thick and rather obliquely inserted, very thin, nigrescent, and 
shaggy with long and spreading hairs, cflet deeper above, laterally flat- 
tened. Calyx teeth subulate, about 2-4 mm. long.  Pedicels almost 
none. Bracts subulate-lanceolate, from half to nearly as long as the 
calyx, hyaline, long-fringed. Peduncles stout, about 1 dm. long and 
hardly as iong as the leaves, the floral rachis so short at first as to put 
the flowers in heads and then elongating with age. Leaves 1-2 dm. 
long, with stout and tapering petioles and rachis, the latter the longer. 
Leaflets 7-10 pairs, elliptical to oval, 1-2 em. long, green or dark, with 
long and shaggy spreading hairs like the stems, peduncles and ‘calyx, 
with fine hairs which are somewhat flattened and twisted and from an 
enlarged base. Stipules very thin and hyaline and green-veined, trian- 
‚gular-acuminate, 1-1.5 cm.long, adnate, not connate. Proper stems 
rarely a foot long, with few internodes, the upper one rarely 8cm. long, 
tufted from the few and woody crowns. Pubescence variable from | 
1-3 mm. long. Plants growing in good gravelly soil on benches in the 
sagebrush, Lower Temperate life zone, throughout the western part 
of the Great Basin and southward to the Mojave desert, northward to 
the rim of the Basin and Stein's Mt, eastward but a short distance 
from the base of the Sierras, Owen’s valley Candelaria Nevada and the 
Blue Mts Oregon, and up the Snake river in the Columbia Basin from 
- Huntington to Glenn’s Ferry. __ Ae a em d 
Astragalus malacus var. cbfalcatus (Nelson). A. obfalcatus Nel- — 
. son Bot. Gaz. 54 411 (1912). This is a robust form (hardly deserving 
-varietal rank) with much larger leaves. Pods falcate, 3-4 cm. long. - 
6-8 mm. high, 3-4 mm. wide, long-acuminate. Calyx lobes about as 
long as tube. Bracts with long and capillary tips. Leaflets 2 cm. | 
n Plants about a foot high. Intergrades alsooccur. From Pose  — 
to Hu i 
then by myself there and at Glend's Ferry about 1903, 
ntington. This was ven found by Cleburne at Weiser in 1883, — — 
