J go OXYTROPIS LAMBERTI. COLORADO LOCO-VETCH. 



Specimen we have taken for illustration ; but it has always the 

 same showy head of flowers, thrown up above the silvery foliage, 

 so as to be seen even from some distance away. Generally there 

 are but two or three flower stems to a plant, but more are occa- 

 sionally found. Sometimes the flowers are arranged in a 

 denser head, and at other times more drawn out than in the illus- 

 tration, and the leaflets are often broader and wider. In past 

 times many of these variations have received distinctive botanical 

 names, such as Oxytropis Plattciisis, O. scricca, and O. Hookeri- 

 ana ; but these distinctions are abandoned now. In color there 

 is much variation from purple to rose, and white is said to be 

 not unfrequendy met with, though the writer found but one such 

 specimen in several weeks' collecting through South Park. The 

 specimen illustrated was obtained from that place. 



In the last century the species now referred to this genus were 

 included among the milk-vetches or Astragalus. They were 

 removed from this family in 1S02 by Aug. P. De Candolle, who 

 wrote a treatise especially devoted to this litde family. Those 

 which he called Oxytropis differed from the rest in having a 

 sharp point to the keel or lower portion of the corolla, and which 

 suggested the name for the genus from the Greek oxys sharp, 

 and tropis keel. It seems a sharp point to found a genus on ; 

 but as the various species group well together, it seems sufficient 

 to command general acceptance. 



The species we now introduce was the first American of the 

 genus discovered, all the others then known being natives of 

 the old world. In 1S25, when De Candolle published the vol- 

 ume of the " Prodromus," containing the ord^r Legiuninos^, there 

 were forty-nine species known, but then only this one American 

 among them. Now Mr. Watson, in his " Bibliographical Index," 

 recognizes ten American spe<:ies. It seems to have been first 

 found by Mr. Thomas Nuttall, the early explorer of our Western 

 country; but it was first nanied and described by Pursh in his 

 "Flora Americanae Septentrinalis," issued in London in 1814. 

 Pursh was never beyond the Mississippi; but without much 



