December 2012 Number 1 - Utah Native Plant Society

Calochortiana December 2012 Number 1
ger cluster of A. lentiginosus var. palans. Also, the inflated
members of A. lentiginosus sampled (see Figure
3: A. lentiginosus var. araneosus, A; versus A. lentiginosus
var. stramineus, T) in this study are also spread an
equivalent distance apart. The presence of a yellow
flower and cylindrical pods contributed highly to the A.
lentiginosus var. maricopae group. Though the flower
color of A. lentiginosus var. maricopae was reported by
Barneby (1964) to be ochroleucous in the type description,
field observations in 2005 and 2006 revealed that
the flower is yellow to light yellow in color, but not as
deep a yellow as that found in European Astragalus,
Thermopsis, or Trifolium. Ochroleucous flowers in Astragalus
tend to have a cream tint and dry a whitish-tan,
or tend to be distinctly white, basally, and grade to a
yellowish tint, apically, especially in age. The flower
color, the distinctiveness of the pod morphology, and
the range disjunction could be utilized as support for a
species-level delimitation for this taxon. However, A.
lentiginosus var. maricopae is not the only variety in
this complex with yellowish flowers. Though some individuals
of the southern California endemic, A. lentiginosus
var. nigricalycis M.E. Jones, seem to have creamish
to greenish-white flowers, most have yellow flowers
that dry to a darker yellow in age. Also, A. lentiginosus
var. bryantii has pods that are narrower, longer, and
more tubular than those in A. lentiginosus var. maricopae
(see the taxonomic treatment below for more specific
morphological differences). When considering
both the genetic and morphological data, A. lentiginosus
var. maricopae is just one of several taxa at the extreme
edge of the range of variation in A. lentiginosus and one
of the most morphologically distinct varieties in the
Palantia.
In contrast, Astragalus lentiginosus var. ursinus is
genetically distinct from its nearest relative, A. lentiginosus
var. mokiacensis (Alexander 2008, Alexander &
Liston, in prep). The two are, however, much more sim-
Table 5. Results of 43 specimen Astragalus lentiginosus var. mokiacensis PCoA. This analysis used 12
variable characters. Each is listed in the Kendall rank correlations below.
Eigenvalues
1 2
1.78 0.43
Percent of Total Variance Explained
48.4 11.69
Kendall rank correlations and probabilities
(between PCoA coordinates and morphological characters, significance of p