Downy-beaked oxytropis

Oxytropis pilosa, commonly known as woolly or downy-beaked oxytropis, is a perennial herbaceous legume in the family Fabaceae native to the steppes, dry grasslands and stony slopes of central and eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Siberia and central Asia. It grows in low spreading tufts 15 to 40 centimeters tall from a stout taproot. The pinnately compound leaves are 5 to 15 centimeters long, with 10 to 20 pairs of small narrow lanceolate to oblong leaflets covered in long soft white hairs that give the whole plant a silvery silky appearance. In early to midsummer dense ovoid heads of pale yellow pea-flowers are borne on long leafless stalks rising above the foliage; the keel of each flower terminates in a small pointed beak characteristic of the genus. The fruit is an oblong inflated pod, also softly hairy, containing several small kidney-shaped seeds.