3.5-4 nim long, ca. 2 mm wide, with a stipelike base of style; seeds 2-2.8 mm 

 long, 1-1.4 mm wide, olive-brown, smooth. Leaves odd-pinnate, alternate, 

 sessile, or petiolate; stipules setaceous, caducous; leaflets entire to rarely 

 crenulate, glandular-punctate or punctate, petiolate, stipulate on upper side. 

 Inflorescences a stipelike terminal raceme or racemes clustered and appearing 

 paniculate. Flowers pedicellate from axil of a caducous bract; calyx obconic, 

 persistent, 5-Iobed; corolla reduced to a single petal which is erect, clawed, 

 obovate, purple, and wTapped around stamens and style; stamens 10, 

 monadelphous at ver>' base, distinct above, exserted. Fruit a 1 -seeded, 

 indehiscent pod, gland-dotted (Great Plains Flora Association 1986). 



3. LOCAL FIELD CHARACTERS: Leadplant might be confused with 



members of the Dalea and Psoralea genera, but these plants are not truly 

 slirubs, and they have lea\'es with conspicuous resin-like glands. 



C. GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION 



1. GLOBAL RANGE: Great Plains, east to Indiana, south to Texas, and west to 

 Manitoba, Wyoming, and New Mexico. 



2. STATE DISTRIBUTION: This species is known in Montana from two 

 collections: a 1948 collection in the area of Albion in Carter County, and a 

 1922 collection from a Forest Service ranger station. No other locality 

 information was provided with the latter, but elevation was listed as "3000 ft." 

 and aspect as "NW." Only the Ashland District in Powder River county has 

 ranger stations close to this low elevation in Montana, so it can only be 

 conjectured that the Ashland District harbored the species. 



3. STUDY AREA DISTRIBUTION: The District ranger station with the closest 

 elevation is the Ashland Ranger Station where the District Office is 

 headquartered at 2920-3040 feet. The Twenty Mile Ranger Station is at 3,150 

 feet and the Fort Howe Ranger Station is at 3,350 ft. The hypothesis that this 

 species occurs at the District Office was not developed before the field season, 

 so survey work was not conducted at the Ashland Ranger Station. 



No detailed information is available for the species on the following subjects as pertinent to 

 the District or to the state distribution as a whole: 



D. HABITAT 



E. POPULATION BIOLOGY AND DEMOGRAPHY 



F. POPULATION ECOLOGY 



G. LAND OWNERSHIP (MONTANA) 



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