Field locoweed

Oxytropis campestris is a low caespitose perennial herb of the Fabaceae family growing 5-30 cm tall from a stout, branched, woody taproot that produces dense clumps of leaves from a central crown; flowering and leafy stems are very short or virtually absent, with leaves and peduncles arising directly from the crown. Leaves are imparipinnate, 5-20 cm long, with 15-31 lanceolate to elliptic leaflets 5-15 mm long that are densely clothed with appressed silvery-silky hairs on both surfaces, lending the foliage a strikingly silvery-grey appearance. Inflorescences are short dense terminal racemes of 6-25 pea-flowers borne on stout erect peduncles 5-30 cm long that overtop the foliage. Each flower is 12-18 mm long with a tubular calyx of five subequal narrow lobes clothed in dark spreading hairs and a pale to deep yellow corolla (sometimes with a purple tip on the keel) whose keel is conspicuously pointed at the apex, distinguishing the genus from the closely related Astragalus. The fruit is an erect ovoid pod 1-2 cm long with a longitudinal groove on the lower suture and densely hairy walls. Native to dry alpine and subalpine meadows, gravelly slopes, stony tundra and open subarctic forests across the northern hemisphere.