Astragalus Bodini

  • Title

    Astragalus Bodini

  • Author(s)

    Rupert C. Barneby

  • Scientific Name

    Astragalus bodinii E.Sheld.

  • Description

    95. Astragalus Bodini

    Slender, diffuse or prostrate, loosely matted, with a thick woody taproot and pluricipital, sometimes knotty root-crown at or shortly below soil-level, thinly strigulose with straight, appressed or subappressed hairs up to 0.2-0.5 (0.6) mm. long, the herbage green or subcinereous when young, the leaflets glabrous above; stems usually many, slender or filiform, 1-4.5 dm. long, branching freely at the lower emersed nodes and often also below ground, exceptionally simple, the ultimate branches sometimes subfiliform; stipules 1-7 mm. long, broadly deltoid to ovate, all connate-amplexicaul, the lowest small, membranous becoming papery- scarious, united into a shortly bidentate, cuplike sheath, the longer upper ones connate through ± ½ their length or at base only, with triangular or lance- triangular, subherbaceous, green or purplish blades, the uppermost sometimes free; leaves (0.7) 1-7 (9) cm. long, the lower ones slender-petioled, the upper subsessile, with 7-17 (19) commonly well-separated, lance-oblong, oblanceolate, or ovate and retuse or emarginate, or oblong-elliptic and subacute, flat, thin-textured leaflets (1) 2-15 (17) mm. long; peduncles slender or filiform, (0.7) 12.5 (18.5) cm. long, usually all but the uppermost ones surpassing the leaf, but sometimes all or most of them (especially those of slender lateral branchlets) shorter; racemes rather compactly to loosely or even remotely (2) 3-15 (16)- flowered, the axis early elongating, (0.2) 0.5-9 (10) cm. long in fruit; bracts membranous to subherbaceous, ovate, triangular, or lanceolate, 0.5-2.5 mm. long; pedicels ascending or slightly arched outward, 0.7-2.2 mm. long, scarcely elongating in fruit; bracteoles 0; calyx 3.8-6.1 (7.2) mm. long, strigulose with black or mixed black and white hairs, the subsymmetric disc 0.5-1.1 mm. deep, the tube 2.4-3.7 (4) mm. long, 1.7-2.8 (3) mm. in diameter, the subulate teeth (1) 1.2-2.4 mm. long; petals pink-purple to reddish-lilac, drying violet or pallid; banner recurved through ± 40-45°, obovate-cuneate, oblanceolate, spatulate- or elliptic-oblanceolate, shallowly or deeply notched, (6.9) 8-11.7 (12.4) mm. long, 3.7-6.8 mm. wide; wings (6.6) 7.2-10 mm. long, the claws 2.7-4 mm., the oblong-oblanceolate, linear-elliptic, or elliptic, obtuse or shallowly emarginate, nearly straight or gently incurved blades 4.2—6.9 mm. long, 1.5—2.7 mm. wide, keel (5.3) 5.5-8.9 mm. long, the claws 2.7-4.5 mm., the obliquely triangular to lunately half-obovate blades (2.6) 3-5.2 mm. long, 1.8-2.4 mm. wide, abruptly incurved through 90-95° to the bluntly deltoid (or rarely porrect and then sharply deltoid) apex; anthers 0.3—0.55 mm. long; pod ascending or loosely spreading (mostly humistrate), sessile on a minute gynophore up to 0.8 (1) mm. long (but mostly shorter), the somewhat obliquely ovoid to lance-, ovoid-, or oblong- ellipsoid body (4.5) 5.5-10 (12) mm. long, (2.2) 3-4.5 mm. in diameter, rounded, broadly obconic, or truncate at base, contracted distally into an erect or slightly declined, short-conical or cusplike beak 0.5-2 mm. long, straight or very slightly either in- or decurved, obscurely trigonous, with low-convex lateral faces and nearly flat to depressed and very openly and shallowly sulcate dorsal face, the very thin, greenish, minutely but sometimes quite densely black-, partly white-, or rarely wholly white-strigulose valves becoming papery-membranous, stramineous, subdiaphanous, faintly reticulate, not inflexed; dehiscence (seldom observed) apparently primarily basal and upward through the ventral suture, the valves eventually separating; ovules 2-10, mostly 5-8; seeds smooth, brown, dull or somewhat lustrous, 1.7-2 mm. long.—Collections: 63 (iii); representative: Cody & Webster 5971 (DAO, NY); J. P. Anderson 7264a (DAO, TEX) Lutz 1055 (RSA, USFS); Macoun 58,429 (NY); Cody & McCanse 3252 (CAS, DAO MO); Cody 4180 (DAO, GH); Boivin & Perron 12,790 (DAO), A. Nelson 135 (NY, RM), 1529 (MO, NY, RM), 3395 (CAS, RM, the robust extreme), 8694 (NY, RM); E. & L. Payson 2912 (GH, MO, NY, RM); Jones 5649 (NY, POM); Ripley & Barneby 10,517 (CAS, NY, RSA); W. A. Weber 7916 (CAS, SMU, TEX); Scoggan 3560 (K).

    Of wide but interrupted dispersal, with two main areas of abundance and a few far-flung relic stations eastward: locally common on moist gravelly banks and beds or gravel bars of streams and rivers, sometimes in low sandy meadows, at the edge of aspen or birch thickets, occasionally (near Carcross) on dunes, in Yukon becoming weedy and aggressive in disturbed soil along highway ditches and cleared woodland, recorded mostly from below 2000 feet (but possibly a little higher in some stations), valleys of the middle and upper Yukon and Tanana Rivers in central Alaska and southern Yukon, east to the Mackenzie and Athabaska Rivers in Mackenzie and northern Alberta; lake shores, below 1000 feet, central Manitoba; greatly isolated on turfy seashore at Pistolet Bay, Strait of Belle Isle, northern Newfoundland; and again locally frequent in moist meadows, mountain parks, on banks of mountain brooks, about willow thickets, and more rarely along wayside ditches and on alkaline bottomland, mostly between 6000 and 9800 feet in the southern Rocky Mountains, from the headwaters of the Rio Grande in southern Colorado to the upper forks of the Green and North Platte Rivers in Wyoming, descending (or perhaps washed down and only fleetingly established) along the latter stream into western Nebraska as low as 3700 feet; apparently isolated on the upper Fremont River in southcentral Utah.—Map No. 39.—June to September.

    Astragalus Bodini (the collector) Sheld. in Minn. Bot. Stud. 1: 122. 1894 ("bodini").— "Near Cheyenne, Wyoming, July, 1889, by J. E. Bodin... also collected near Laramie, July, 1889, by Dr. Edw. L. Greene."—Holotypus, dated July 11, 1889, MINN! paratypus (Greene in 1889), ND!—Phaca Bodini (Sheld.) Rydb. in Bull. Torr. Club 32: 665. 1905 ("Bodinii").

    Astragalus debilis sensu Jones, Rev. Astrag. 88, Pl. 7. 1923; an Gray in Proc. Philad. Acad. 1863, p. 60. 1863, in nota, based on Phaca debilis Nutt. ex T. & G., 1838, nom. dub. (cf. Append. I).

    Astragalus yukonis (of Yukon) Jones, Rev. Astrag. 89, Pl. 7. (15 Feb.) 1923 ("Yukonis") —"No 1082 Gorman from Ranch valley near Fort Selkirk ... No. 626 Eastwood Whitehorse on the Yukon July 23, 1914."—Holotypus, Gorman 1082, collected July 5, 1899, POM! isotypus, NY! paratypi, Eastwood 626, CAS, NY, UC, WS!—Phaca yukonis (Jones) Rydb. in N. Amer. Fl. 24: 360. 1929 ("Yukonis").

    Homalobus retusus (retuse, of the leaflets) Rydb. in Bull. Torr. Club 50: 186. (25 May) 1923.—‘Type collected at Fort Selkirk, Yukon, July 20, 1899, Tarleton 128a & b..."-Cotypi, NY! isotypus (No. 128a), US!—Astragalus visigothicus (visigothic, or northwestern) Tidest. in Proc. Biol. Wash. 50: 20. 1937, a legitimate substitute (non A. retusus Willd., "1794" (n.v.); nec DC., 1802).

    Astragalus stragulus (a carpet) Fern. in Rhodora 28: 214. 1926.—Newfoundland: ... Cook Point, Pistolet Bay, July 18, 1925, Fernald & Gilbert No. 28,583; August 13, 1925, Fernald, Gilbert & Hotchkiss No. 28,584."—Holotypus, No. 28,584, GH! isotypi, BM, CAS, G, K, NY, P, US! paratypi, No. 28,583, G, GH, NY!—Phaca stragulus (Fern.) Rydb. in N. Amer. Fl. 24: 360. 1929 ("stragala").

    Phaca Preblei (Alfred E. Preble) Rydb. in N. Amer. Fl. 24 : 361. 1929. ("Prebblei").— "Type collected on the Athabaska River, Alberta, August 14, 1903, Prebble [sic] & Cary 123 ... ’’—Holotypus, from a place called "Mountain Rapid," US!—Astragalus Preblei (Rydb.) Tidest. in Proc. Biol. Soc. Wash. 50: 21. 1937 ("Prebblei").

    The Bodin milk-vetch is found in two widely separated main areas of dispersal, one extending from the Yukon Valley east to the Mackenzie and Athabaska Rivers, the other in the southern Rocky Mountains, and in a few widely scattered, probably relic stations in Manitoba, Newfoundland, and central Utah. By historical accident it was picked up and described independently from three mutually remote points; as a consequence, it has passed in the far Northwest, in western United States, and in Newfoundland under three different names, A. yukonis, A. Bodini (or A. debilis) and A. stragulus, respectively. Since there is a gap of nearly one thousand miles width (or ± twelve degrees of latitude) between the two main areas, it has naturally been assumed that the plants in these two sectors represent separate species. It is only in recent years that a truly representative sample of A. yukonis has been available, or a valid comparison with the better known A. Bodini (sens. str.) possible. During the preliminary studies I prepared separate descriptions for the two, in the expectation that real differences would appear when these were compared. The plant of the parks and streamsides of the Rocky Mountains has a superficial root-crown and relatively compact raceme, whereas that of northwest Canada and Alaska has the crown of the root and base of the stems more often than not buried in sand or gravel, and an openly or even remotely flowered raceme of (on the average) slightly fewer flowers. At high latitudes the plants are found in disturbed soils, the aboriginal habitat being along shingly river banks and on gravel bars, and it seems probable that the subterranean position of the caudex is due to shifting of the surface materials. With a range lying between 57° N. and the Arctic Circle, A. yukonis is subjected to the long summer day, and this circumstance may be related to the relatively rank or drawn-out and, as it were, etiolated habit of growth as compared with that of the Rocky Mountain plant in Lat. 37-43° N. The important point to be stressed is that the individual flower and individual fruit is essentially the same in both areas. Moreover, there are some extremely slender examples on record from southern Wyoming which are indistinguishable even in habit from the boreal phase (cf. F. W. Johnson in 1905, US).

    In its range across the northern part of the continent, A. Bodini is somewhat polymorphic, the populations differing from one another in number and shape of leaflets, length of the racemes, and color of the hairs on the pod and calyx. Along the upper Yukon River, type- region of A. yukonis and Homalobus retusus, there are commonly not more than thirteen leaflets, but these may be relatively broad and obtuse to emarginate, or narrow and subacute. Both types of leaflet are found at Fort Selkirk; in fact, the isotypus of A. yukonis at NY consists partly of broad-leaved plants, identified by Rydberg as H. retusus. On the Athabaska River the leaflets rise to seventeen in number and are commonly of a broad type; but the typus of Phaca Preblei, a plant with relatively open racemes, such as occur often in A. yukonis west of the Mackenzie Mountains, has nothing more remarkable about it than the white (rather than more usual black) pubescence on the pod.

    In Newfoundland A. Bodini is known only from the type-locality of A. stragulus on the Strait of Belle Isle, close to seventeen hundred miles from the nearest-known station in central Manitoba. At the time Fernald described A. stragulus, the material of A. yukonis available for comparison was not only extremely scanty but not even truly illustrative of its kind. In order to facilitate discussion, the differential characters stressed by Fernald have been abstracted from his running account, as follows:

    Leaflets 7-13, relatively narow, only exceptionally retuse, cinereous; peduncles 5-10 cm. long; racemes elongating; flower small (banner 5 mm. long); pod 2-3-seeded — A. yukonis

    Leaflets 9-19, retuse, glabrous above; peduncles 0.2-9 cm. long; racemes subcapitate; flower larger (banner 8-10 mm. long); pod 5-8-seeded — A. stragulus

    As already noted, the leaflets in Mackenzie and northern Alberta are often as many as 17 to the leaf. Peduncles of different lengths, varying from a few millimeters to about a decimeter long on the same plant, are known from Yukon as well as Newfoundland. In Alaska and Yukon the banner varies from 7 to 11 mm. (none so short as "5 mm." has been seen), and the flowers are identical in form and proportions to those of the eastern plant. Ovule counts from 2 to 8 (rarely 10) in the West are essentially the same as for A. stragulus, and it is certainly untrue that the latter sets more numerous seeds to the pod. The contrasts brought out by Fernald have all proved fallible, but A. stragulus does seem to differ slightly in its usually shorter raceme-axis, mostly (2) 5-22 mm. rather than (5) 10-90 mm. long, and in its comparatively low and diffuse stems not known to exceed 1.5 dm. in length. It seems reasonable to interpret the Newfoundland plant as a relic race of A. Bodini, in which a few variational tendencies extend beyond the norm encountered in the main ranges of the species. Possibly these exaggerated characters have become fixed through geographic isolation, in which case A. stragulus might deserve recognition as a poorly marked variety. The diameter of the teacup in which Jones and Fernald together brewed up a classic storm (cf. Jones, Contrib. West. Bot. 15: 14, Rhodora 44 : 437) has shrunk perceptibly with the passage of time.

    The Bodin milk-vetch is a delicately pretty astragalus, sometimes resembling forms of A. alpinus, at others recalling the Oroboidei in habit and appearance. It differs technically from these in its sessile and deciduous pod devoid of the rudimentary hyaline septum. In the southern Rocky Mountains it is often associated with A. leptaleus, but is easily distinguished by its determinate root-crown, pink-purple (not white) flowers, and turgid or bladdery (even though small) ascending pod of almost transparent texture. The roots are said to be dug as a spring vegetable by the Alaskan Eskimos (near Rampart, Gasser, WS), and in Wyoming the foliage is reported to provide good forage (A. Nelson in Erythea 6. 53).

    The early collections of A. Bodini date back many years before its description by Sheldon in 1894. It was first encountered by Nuttall on his transcontinental journey of 1834 (cf. Phaca debilis in Appendix I). Fremont collected it on the Sweetwater River east of South Pass in 1843 (K), and Geyer found it in "springy meadows of the upper Platte" (Geyer 3, G, K, NY, OXF, P) two years later. Capt. Pullen collected it on the Mackenzie River in 1850 (K), and another of his specimens, dated 1849, came ostensibly from "between Cape Barrow and the MacKenzie River" (K), but there is no modern collection from the arctic coast and the locality requires confirmation. The Torrey herbarium (NY) possesses old specimens of A. Bodini, one of them distributed by Hooker as Phaca alpina, another labeled "Phaca elegans. Plains of the Rocky Mountains," which must have been brought back by early travelers in the Canadian Northwest, the first of them possibly by Richardson. A plant mentioned by Jones (1923, p. 89), from Salubria, Idaho, as representing a form of A. debilis ( = our A. Bodini) with obtuse leaflets has turned out to be A. lentiginosus (Jones in April, 1900, POM).