Astragalus trichopodus

Santa barbara milkvetch

Family: Fabaceae · Type: perennial · Native

Santa barbara milkvetch is a California native perennial found in coastal and southern California regions in coastal sage scrub and chaparral at moderate elevations. Flowering from March to June, this plant produces cream-colored flowers with faint lilac blush, with individual flowers 11 to 19 millimeters long. Growing with robust, bushy-branched stems 20 to 100 centimeters tall that are minutely strigose, it has a distinctive spreading growth habit. Its leaves are compound with 15 to 39 lance-shaped leaflets, each 2 to 25 millimeters long, arranged along stems generally subsessile. The fruit is a distinctive pendulous, bladdery pod 13 to 45 millimeters long, with thin papery walls and sparse minute hairs.

California counties: Ventura, Orange, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, Riverside, Kern, San Diego, San Bernardino, San Joaquin

Data from The California Species Project — 14,000+ California species with verified data from CNPS, CDFW, USFWS, Jepson eFlora, Cal-IPC, and more.