Astragalus misellus

Quite slender, with a taproot and shortly forking caudex, finely strigulose with ascending or largely incumbent, straight, curved, or somewhat curly hairs up to 0.35-0.65 mm. long, the herbage yellowish-green or cinereous, the leaflets either glabrous or pubescent above; stems several or numerous, simple or rarely branched below the middle, (0.25) 0.5—2.5 dm. long, incurved-ascending or in exposed sites prostrate, commonly tinged with brownish-purple toward the base; stipules 1.5-3 mm. long, herbaceous but the lowest becoming firmly papery and brownish, the lowest commonly fully amplexicaul but not (or only very rarely and obscurely) connate, the upper ones semiamplexicaul, with triangular or lanceolate, spreading or deflexed blades; leaves (2.5) 3—7 cm. long, petioled but the upper ones shortly so, with 9—21 oblong-obovate to linear-oblong or -elliptic, obtuse, subacute, or (in some lower leaves) retuse, folded or marginally involute leaflets 2-10 mm. long; peduncles ascending, (1.5) 2.5-8 (10) cm. long; racemes loosely 5-15- flowered, the flowers becoming horizontal and at length declined, the axis (often produced beyond the last flower as a filiform appendage) 1-8 cm. long in fruit; bracts submembranous, ovate or lanceolate, 1-1.5 mm. long; pedicels at anthesis 0.8-1.3 mm. long, in fruit arched outward, a little thickened, 1.3-1.7 mm. long; bracteoles 0; calyx 3.4-4.8 mm. long, pubescent like the herbage with white or mixed black and white hairs, the disc 0.5-0.9 mm. deep, the brownish-purple tube 2.3-2.8 mm. long, 1.8-2.9 mm. in diameter, the subulate teeth (0.9) 1-2.2 mm. long, the whole becoming papery, marcescent unruptured; petals yellowish or greenish-ochroleucous, the banner veined with brownish-lilac; banner recurved through 45-85°, ovate-cuneate, notched, (6.5) 7-9.5 (10) mm. long, (4) 4.8-7.6 mm. wide; wings (6.6) 7-9.5 mm. long, the claws 2-2.8 mm., the obliquely obovate, obtuse or subemarginate blades (4.6) 5-8.1 mm. long, (1.7) 2.4-3.7 mm. wide, both incurved but the left one more abruptly so and further, its blade set at ± 90° to the claw; keel 4.6-6.4 mm. long, the claws 2.1-2.8 mm., the obliquely obovate or half-obovate blades 2.6-3.9 mm. long, 1.9-2.6 mm. wide, abruptly incurved through 110—130° to the bluntly deltoid apex; anthers (0.35) 0.4-0.6 mm. long; pod pendulous, stipitate, the stipe 2.5-5 mm. long, the body lunately lance-elliptic in profile, 1.2—2.5 cm. long, 2.6—4 mm. in diameter, tapering at both ends, cuspidate at apex, triquetrously compressed with flat lateral and openly sulcate dorsal faces, the thin, greenish, densely strigulose-villosulous valves becoming papery, brownish-stramineous, the complete septum 1.3—2.4 mm. wide; ovules 11-17; seeds brown, minutely pitted, dull, 2.2-2.7 mm. long.