A S T R A G A L U S campestris.
Yellowish Mountain Milk-vetch.
DIADELPHIA Decandria.
Gen. Char. Legume of two cells, swelling.
Spec. Char. Stem none. Stalk'ascending. Calyx
hairy. Leaflets lanceolate, acute. Legumes
hairy, inflated, erect.
Syn. Astragalus campestris. Linn. Sp. PI, 1072.
Willd. Sp. Pl. v. 3. 1317.
A. n. 406. Hall. Hist. v. 1. 177. t. 13.
A. uralensis. FI. Dan. t. 1041.
A. sordidus. Willd. Sp. PI. v. 3. 1313 ?
DISCOVERED by Mr. G. Don, in the summer of 1812,
growing in great abundance, on a high rock, on one of the mountains
at the head of Clova, Angusshire, near the White Water.
The Bishop of Carlisle, to whom this new British plant was first
sent, very justly determined it to be the A. campestris, and the
plant of Haller, both which points we have confirmed by authentic
specimen's. There can scarcely be more doubt of its being
the uralensis of Vahl in FI. Dan. and therefore, we presume,
sordidus of Willdenow, who has fallen into much error respecting
this and our uralensis, t. 466.
The present is, as Mr. Don observes, a very splehdid species.
Its specific characters however are not easy to seize upon. The
stalk is ascending, rather than erect, and sometimes decumbent.
Flowers cream-coloured or bulf, with more or less of a purple
tinge on the keel and wings, discernible in Mr. Don’s dried specimens,
as well as in foreign ones, and mentioned by Linnaeus
and Haller. The leaflets are lanceolate, or somewhat ovate
acute, more or less silky. Legume more ovate and inflated than
in uralensis, covered with short, spreading, black as well as white
hairs.