川青黄耆 chuan qing huang qi

Astragalus abramovii Gontscharow; A. brachytropis (Can­dolle) C. A. Meyer f. giganteus Lipsky; A. pseudobrachytropis Gontscharow.

Plants 25-35 cm tall. Stems several, up to 30 cm, glabrous or very sparsely furnished with subappressed predominantly black hairs 0.2-0.3 mm. Leaves 5-9 cm; stipules 4-9 mm, glabrous or with few hairs; petiole 0.3-1 cm, like rachis sparsely to loosely covered with subappressed to ascending short black and white hairs; leaflets in 7-9 pairs, elliptic, 5-10 × 2.5-5 mm, apex obtuse to retuse, blades of upper leaves mostly narrower, up to 15 × 3.5 mm, apex acute or minutely mu­cronulate, all abaxially loosely covered with appressed white hairs, adaxially glabrous. Racemes 3-4.5 cm, rather densely many flowered; peduncle 6-11 cm, loosely or below raceme rather densely covered with subappressed black hairs; bracts whitish membranous, linear-acute, 5-10 mm, black hairy. Calyx 6-7 mm, densely subappressed black hairy; teeth 1-3 mm. Pet­als blue or purple; standard widely elliptic, 12-14 × 7-8 mm, apex deeply incised; wings 9-10 mm; keel 7-8 mm. Legumes subsessile, pendulous, narrowly oblong, 4-10 mm, 3.5-4 mm high and ca. 3.5 mm wide, with a beak 1-1.5 mm, incompletely 2-locular to nearly fully 2-locular; valves densely covered with ascending to spreading black hairs 0.3-0.5 mm, with scattered white hairs mixed in.

2800-3800 m. Gansu, Ningxia, Qinghai, Sichuan, Xinjiang, Xi­zang [Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Tajikistan].