WILDFLOWERS OF NEW MEXICO

Spreading by rhizomes, this leafy plant with 1–4-foot tall, erect stems can form dense colonies on roadsides and drainage areas. Note the dense spikes of white, pea-like flowers and bur-like seed pods covered with hooked prickles.

FLOWERS: May–August. Spikes with 20–50 white to creamy, tubular flowers, each 3/8–1/2-inch long (9–13 mm); 5 petals with a narrow, protruding upper banner, 2 side wings, and a short keel. Fruit is a cluster of oblong pods, each 1/2–3/4-inch long (12–20 mm), densely covered with hooked prickles.

LEAVES: Alternate. Blade 3–7 1/2-inches long (8–19 cm), pinnately compound with 13–19 leaflets along the midrib, each 5/16–2 1/8-inches long (8–53 mm), lance-shaped to oblong. Note glandular dots on bottom of leaflets.

HABITAT: Periodically moist sandy, gravelly soils, drainages, stream banks, meadows, roadsides, disturbed areas; desert scrub, pinyon-juniper woodlands.

ELEVATION: 3,500–8,400 feet.

RANGE: Widespread in states west of the Mississippi River.

SIMILAR SPECIES: Most white-flowered milkvetches, Astragalus species, have sprawling rosettes of stems, no glandular dots on leaflets, and no hooked prickles on pods.

NM COUNTIES: Almost statewide in low- to mid-elevation, periodically moist, disturbed habitats: Bernalillo, Catron, Chaves, Cibola, Colfax, De Baca, Dona Ana, Eddy, Grant, Guadalupe, Harding, Lincoln, Los Alamos, McKinley, Mora, Otero, Quay, Rio Arriba, Roosevelt, San Juan, San Miguel, Sandoval, Santa Fe, Socorro, Taos, Torrance, Union, Valencia.