Duration: Perennial

Nativity: Native

Lifeform: Forb/Herb

General: Herbaceous perennials, 10-25 cm tall, stems leafy, decumbent to prostrate, sometimes ascending, herbage silvery pubescent to strigose, plants herbaceous to suffrutescent above the caudex.

Leaves: Alternate, pinnately compound, leaflets 3-5, obovate to oblanceolate, to 15 mm long and 3-6 mm wide, obtuse at the tips, sometimes with a notch at the apex (emarginate), margins entire, stipules glandlike or absent.

Flowers: Yellow, often drying purple, with banner, wing, and keel petals (papilionaceous), 12-18 mm long, calyx teeth shorter than the tube, stamens 10, flowers axillary, solitary, or in umbel-like clusters, the peduncles usually much longer than the leaves.

Fruits: Pods narrow, terete to flattened, 15-25 mm long, 4-5 mm wide. Seeds several.

Ecology: Found on dry mesas, slopes, and grasslands, from 3,000-7,000 ft (914-2134 m); flowering March-August.

Distribution: Arizona only.

Notes: Look to the silvery-pubescent or strigose herbage and the pods 4-5 mm wide to help identify this species.

Ethnobotany: Species used for food.

Etymology: Acmispon comes from the Greek acme for point or hook, while mearnsii is named after Army surgeon and naturalist Edgar Alexander Mearns (1856-1916).

Synonyms: Lotus mearnsii, Anisolotus mearnsii, Hosackia mearnsii

Editor: LCrumbacher 2012