Montana Field Guide

Perennial from a branched caudex. Herbage moderately to densely strigillose. Stems erect or ascending, 25–50 cm. Leaves with 11 to 21, linear to oblong leaflets, 3–19 mm long with blunt or emarginate tips. Inflorescence ca. as long as the leaves, narrow, open, with 10–30 spreading flowers. Flowers pink to purple; calyx gray-villous; sepals <1 mm long; banner 8–11 mm long, reflexed; keel 5–8 mm long. Legume pendent, linear to linear-elliptic, nearly terete, 1–2 cm long, glabrate to white-strigose (Lesica et al. 2012. Manual of Montana Vascular Plants. BRIT Press. Fort Worth, TX).

Our plants are variety flexuosus.

Often sandy or gravelly soil of grasslands; plains, valleys (Lesica et al. 2012. Manual of Montana Vascular Plants. BRIT Press. Fort Worth, TX).

POLLINATORS
The following animal species have been reported as pollinators of this plant species or its genus where their geographic ranges overlap: Bombus vagans, Bombus appositus, Bombus auricomus, Bombus bifarius, Bombus borealis, Bombus centralis, Bombus fervidus, Bombus flavifrons, Bombus huntii, Bombus mixtus, Bombus nevadensis, Bombus rufocinctus, Bombus ternarius, Bombus terricola, Bombus occidentalis, Bombus pensylvanicus, Bombus griseocollis, and Bombus insularis (Macior 1974, Thorp et al. 1983, Mayer et al. 2000, Colla and Dumesh 2010, Wilson et al. 2010, Koch et al. 2012, Miller-Struttmann and Galen 2014, Williams et al. 2014).