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Crotalaria pumila Ortega  

No occurrences found

Family: Fabaceae
low rattlebox
Crotalaria pumila image
Anthony Mendoza
  • Field Guide
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Duration: Annual Nativity: Native Lifeform: Subshrub General: Erect, ascending annual 20-60 cm tall with puberulent to glabrate stems and glabrous or glabrate leaflets, stipules linear or filiform, 4-6 mm long, caducous. Leaves: Petioles 2.5 cm long or less, leaflets 3, narrowly elliptic to linear-oblanceolate, 3-15 mm wide to 6 cm long, bright green and glabrous above, slightly glaucous and appressed-puberulent beneath. Flowers: Racemes to 30 cm long, many flowered; calyx 3-4 mm long, lobes triangular, equaling tube, petals 10 mm long, bright yellow, keel and sometimes banner faintly washed with red and drying reddish to purple; acumen of keel slender, 7-8 m long, conspicuously exserted beyond wings. Fruits: Pods oboid or broadly rounded-oblong, 6-9 mm in diameter, 10-15 mm long, appressed-strigose; persistent style that forms slender beak 1.5-2.5 mm long. Seeds yellow to red-brown, reniform, about 3 mm long, smooth. Ecology: Weedy species on sandy, gravelly, or clayey soils on flats and along margins of washes from 4,000-6,000 ft (1219-1829 m); flowers June-October. Distribution: AZ, sw NM, sw TX, s OK and in FL; south through the Greater Antilles, MEX, C. and S. Amer.. Notes: An erect-ascending annual from a taproot distinguished by the trifoliate leaves glabrous above and with appressed hairs below; the flowers are yellow with the keel often constricted or rolled, extending into a beak; the sparsely, few-many-flowered inflorescence with inflated, bladder-like pods also help to make this one distinct. Varies greatly in size of the plant and of the flowers and in the number of flowers in the raceme, from 1 to many. Petals often tinged or streaked with red. Ethnobotany: Seeds boiled, or ground and eaten as a pinole. Etymology: Crotalaria is from Greek drotalon, a rattle or clapper, while pumila means dwarf. Synonyms: None Editor: SBuckley 2010, FSCoburn 2015
Crotalaria pumila image
Frank Rose
Crotalaria pumila image
Anthony Mendoza
Crotalaria pumila image
Anthony Mendoza
Crotalaria pumila image
Anthony Mendoza
Crotalaria pumila image
Patrick Alexander
Crotalaria pumila image
Patrick Alexander
Crotalaria pumila image
Patrick Alexander
Crotalaria pumila image
Patrick Alexander
Crotalaria pumila image
Patrick Alexander
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