Authors:
Erect perennial 5-30cm tall, from a long flexible taproot. Leaves in neat basal tufts composed of thirteen to twenty-one grey or silvery silky-downy folded ovate leaflets 3-4mm long, their margins often lined by black glandular dots. Flowers up to twelve in a terminal raceme 2-4cm long, bright to orange-yellow with brownish-red veins, 7-10mm long. Lomenta formed of four to six plume-haired segments. Argentina and Chile, from the central Cordilleras and scattered throughout Patagonia, on dry stony slopes at 20-300m. An excellent photograph of this attractive foliage plant may be found in A.G.S. Bulletin No.239, p.28, as Astragalus sp. It does in fact depict a high altitude form originally known as A. subsericea var. nigropunctata, which is now a synonym.
