Astragalus alpinus L.
 
FamilyLeguminosae — APG family: Fabaceae
DescriptionMatted; stems creeping at base, stipules lanceolate to deltoid, free to base; leaflets mostly 8-11 pairs, oblong, elliptic to narrowly obovate, white-pubescent beneath; raceme short, with divergent flowers; calyx black-hirsute; flowers bluish-violet, pale at base, rarely white; keel about as long as standard, wings comparatively broad; pod reflexed, stipitate, black-haired, strongly grooved dorsally.
EcologyGrassy slopes, gravel, scree slopes, in the mountains to at least 2,000 meters.
Taxonomy
notes
Forms introgression with subsp. alaskanus Hult. [var. alaskanus (Hult.) Lepage], which occurs chiefly in central Alaska and the Yukon, and differs in having elongate raceme; keel much shorter than the standard; narrow wings (about 2 mm broad); and white petals, bluish at tip. S. alpinus described from Lapland and Switzerland, subsp. alaskanus from the Yukon. Broken line on circumpolar map indicates range of subsp. alpinus var. Brunetianus Fern.
Hultén's Flora About

This is a digital representation of Eric Hultén’s ‘Flora of Alaska and Neighboring Territories: A Manual of the Vascular Plants’, which was published by Stanford University Press in 1968. The book was digitized by C. Webb (at UAMN) as part of the Flora of Alaska project, with funding by the US NSF (Grant 1759964 to Ickert-Bond & Webb), and with permission of Stanford University Press. Data and images © 1968 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. Univ. Usage licence: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0. NB: You may find OCR errors; please refer to the hard-copy if in doubt.