Astragalus Hornii var. minutiflorus

Thinly strigulose, the herbage deep green, rarely subcinereous, the leaflets glabrous above; stems (2) 3—6 dm. long; leaflets 13—33, oblong-obovate, -oblanceolate, or lance-elliptic, rarely narrowly oblanceolate, mostly emarginate; peduncles (2) 3.5-14 cm. long, much shorter to longer than the leaf; racemes (8) 10—20-flowered, the axis 1—3.5 cm. long in fruit.—Collections: 8 (i); representative; Palmer 646 (NY, P); Orcutt 1324 (GH, NY, UC); Harbison & Higgins (from Colonia Guerrero) in 1953 (RSA); Wiggins 9179 (DS); Ripley & Barneby (from San Quintín) in 1936 (K).

Saline and alkaline flats behind barrier beaches and around salt water lagoons along the Pacific Coast of Baja California, south to lat. ±25° 30' N.; also about springs, at 3500 feet, at the northwest end of Sierra Pedro Martir (Los Pozos). —Map No. 126.—November to June, perhaps intermittently throughout the year.

Astragalus Hornii var. minutiflorus (tiny-flowered) Jones in Proc. Calif. Acad. Sci. II, 5: 677. 1895.—"San Jorge, Lower California, Brandegee, March 17, 1889.—Holotypus, CAS! isotypi, POM (fragm.), UC!

Astragalus bajaensis (of Baja California) Sheld. in Minn. Bot. Stud. 1: 169. 1894. Collected near San Gregorio [err. "Gregano"], Lower California, February, 1879, by Mr. T. S. Brandegee."—Holotypus, collected February 7, 1889, MINN! isotypi, CAS, POM (fragm.), UC!—A. miserandus (lamentable, apparently in reference to the epithet bajaensis) Greene in Erythea 3: 76. 1895, a pedantic and illegitimate substitute. A. Hornii var. bajaensis (Sheld.) Jones, Contrib. West. Bot. 10: 62. 1902 ("Bahaeensis"). Phaca bajaensis (Sheld.) Rydb. in N. Amer. Fl. 24 : 358. 1929.

Despite the epithet minutiflorus, the flowers of the Baja California milk-vetch are no smaller than those of var. Hornii and differ only slightly in the prevailingly shorter calyx-teeth. Rydberg contrasted the retuse leaflets of Phaca bajaensis with the merely obtuse ones of P. Hornii, but there are now examples of characteristic var. Hornii with strongly emarginate leaflets. The short-beaked, shortly pubescent pod of var. minutiflorus seems to provide the best differential characters. Two minor variants deserve a word of notice. Brandegee s material from San Telmo (UC) has comparatively densely pubescent foliage and narrower leaflets than in other known populations of the variety; it may show the effect of a desiccating habitat. A remarkable plant collected by Wiggins near a spring at the north end of Sierra San Pedro Martir has relatively loose fruiting racemes, in which the pods are well separated each from its neighbor rather than congested into a close head as is ordinarily characteristic of the species. It may represent an undescribed variety (Wiggins 9179, DS).