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Hedysarum boreale (Chainpod)
Fabaceae (Pea Family)

Semi-deserts, foothills, montane. Canyons, shrublands, openings. Spring, summer.
Pass Creek Trail, Engineer Mountain, August 2, 2005.

This intensely pink-purple Pea is characterized by widely spaced leaflets, segmented pendulous seed pods,

upper and lower sepals of about the same length, and leafless flower stems.  In lower dry areas, Hedysarum boreale grows slender and almost inconspicuous, but on moist mountain meadows and hillsides it produces scores of plants growing to three feet high and wide.

Linnaeus named this genus in 1753.  "Hedysarum" is, according to William Weber, a name given thousands of years ago by Theophrastus to some member of the Pea Family and "boreale" is Greek for "northern".  Nuttall  collected Hedysarum boreale "around Fort Mandan, on the banks of the Missouri" (probably in 1811) and he named and first published the plant in his Genera of North American Plants (1818). (Quotation from Intermountain Flora.)

Hedysarum boreale (Chainpod)
Fabaceae (Pea Family)

Semi-deserts, foothills, montane. Canyons, shrublands, mountain openings. Spring, summer.

Pass Creek Trail, Engineer Mountain, August 2, 2005.

Hedysarum boreale (Chainpod)
Fabaceae (Pea Family)

Semi-deserts, foothills, montane. Canyons, shrublands, mountain openings. Spring, summer.

Pass Creek Trail, Engineer Mountain, August 2, 2005.

Hedysarum boreale (Chainpod)
Fabaceae (Pea Family)

Semi-deserts, foothills, montane. Canyons, shrublands, mountain openings. Spring, summer.

Pass Creek Trail, Engineer Mountain, August 2, 2005.