5f-fc8 - 2 
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Perennial, 4cm* or less high, from a tap root with fleshy roots. 
Branches growing 5 mm. or less annually. Leaves close set in a tuft 
resting on the ground. Vegetative parts silvery canescent. Stipules 
ovate 1 l/2«*2 mm. long. Leaves 15-35 mm. long. Leaflets 11-17, 3-5 
mm. long elli ptic,. -nht.iiB.ft— Peduncles 2-4 cm. long. " Flowers 2-t> in "a 
capitate cluster. Calyx silvery appressed canescent narrowly campan- 
ulate, tube 2-2 l/2 mm. long with sshHiis subulate teeth 1 mm. or less 
long. Corolla glabrous 6-7 mm. long, parts approximately equal in 
length, bluish purple at or nearly to anthesis, with age becoming yellow¬ 
ish white except purplish tip of keel, banner becoming more or less 
bent. Stamens and pistil included. Stamens glabrous. Ovary densely 
white pubescent. Pod sessile, papery, much inflated, mottled with 
reddish purple, white puberulent, 20-30 mm. long, ellipsoid, slightly 
sulcate on both sutures, 2 celled, »a»»4ition formed by intrusions from 
both sutures, placing seeds in middle ot pod .Seeds mitten shaped.. 
See drawings of pods. 
v This plant has been and could easily be confused with 
A. Platytropis Gray. It differs from® that species not only in 
several particulars that will be brought out later but from all 
descriptions of A. platytropis in the formation of the partition in 
the pod. I can find no sub-genus or Rydbery Genus that has the partition 
formation of 5*548. If the pod formation i£ as fixed and as important 
as is seemingly accepted in treatments of Astragalus, it seems to be 
that a new su^genus will have to be provided. 
To make certain that this partition difference does exist I 
have gone into what A. platytropis is. 
