LEGUMINIFER. 71 
inflexion of the upper or ventral suture (that to which the seeds 
are attached). Seeds numerous. 
Herbs, often acaulescent, with the leaves always pinnate, with 
an odd terminal leaflet. Flowers purple, blue, yellow, white, 
ochreous, or yellow, in stalked axillary compact racemose heads. 
This genus derives its name from the two Greek words ofue (owus), sharp, and 
tpomic (tropis), a keel, in reference to the keel of the flower ending in an exserted 
mucrone on the back of the apex. 
SPECIES I—OXYTROPIS HALLERI. Burge. 
Puate CCCLXXITI. 
Bab. Man. Brit. Bot. ed. v. p. 81. Koch, Syn. Fl. Germ. et Helv. ed. ii. p. 200. 
Gr. & Godr. Fl. de Fr. Vol. I. p. 449. 
O. uralensis, D.C. Benth. Handbook Brit. Fl. p.174. Hook. & Arn. Brit. Fl. ed. viii. 
p- 108. 
Astragalus uralensis, Sm. Eng. Bot. No. 466. 
Rootstock branched, many-headed. Leaves all radical, with 
numerous pairs of elliptical acute leaflets, densely covered with 
silky hairs. Scapes erect, longer than the leaves, clothed with 
spreading hairs. Flowers in a compact oval head, elongating in 
fruit into a short raceme. Bracts narrowly elliptical-lanceolate, 
as long as the calyx-tube. Pods erect, inflated, ovoid-cylindrical, 
tapering and recurved at the apex; upper suture much inflexed, 
forming an imperfect dissepiment reaching to the central axis of 
the pod; lower or dorsal suture winged internally, and so forming 
an imperfect partition, which nearly meets that proceeding from 
the upper suture. 
In hilly pastures. Very local. I have only seen it at Queens- 
ferry, in Fifeshire, where the plant is now probably extinct, as in 
1848 I saw only one patch, about a foot from the edge of the cliff, 
where quarrying operations were in active progress. A specimen 
has also been sent me from Glen Turret, Perthshire. It is also 
reported as occurring in the counties of Wigton, Forfar, Argyle, 
Ross, and Sutherland. 
Scotland. Perennial. Summer. 
Rootstock almost woody, many-headed, each head producing a 
tuft of leaves 2 to 5 inches long, with 9 to 15 pairs of leaflets and an 
odd terminal one; leaflets } to 4 inch long, varying from strapshaped- 
elliptical to oval-elliptical, usually broadest rather below the middle, 
so as to approach to lanceolate or ovate, very thickly clothed with 
Short silky hairs, which are most abundant on the under side. 
