Astragalus crassicarpusNutt.

groundplum milkvetch

WFO wfo-0000168952 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Astragalus crassicarpus, photographed by Esben Kjaer
fig. a Esben Kjaer, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-04 / obs. 203264652

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Native range 23 botanical countries

Regions where Astragalus crassicarpus is native: Alberta, Arizona, Arkansas, British Columbia, Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Manitoba, Mexico Northeast, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Saskatchewan, South Dakota, Texas, Wisconsin, Wyoming AlbertaArizonaArkansasBritish ColumbiaColoradoIllinoisIowaKansasLouisianaManitobaMexico NortheastMinnesotaMissouriMontanaNebraskaNew MexicoNorth DakotaOklahomaSaskatchewanSouth DakotaTexasWisconsinWyoming
Native distribution of Astragalus crassicarpus, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Alberta ABT NORTHERN AMERICA
Arizona ARI
Arkansas ARK
British Columbia BRC
Colorado COL
Illinois ILL
Iowa IOW
Kansas KAN
Louisiana LOU
Manitoba MAN
Mexico Northeast MXE
Minnesota MIN
Missouri MSO
Montana MNT
Nebraska NEB
New Mexico NWM
North Dakota NDA
Oklahoma OKL
Saskatchewan SAS
South Dakota SDA
Texas TEX
Wisconsin WIS
Wyoming WYO

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Flowering 358 in flower of 571 examined

Proportion of examined Astragalus crassicarpus in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 1 1 too few examined
Feb 8 9 89% 56% to 98%
Mar 43 51 84% 72% to 92%
Apr 56 82 68% 58% to 77%
May 205 241 85% 80% to 89%
Jun 44 151 29% 22% to 37%
Jul 0 34 0% 0% to 10%
Aug 0 1 too few examined
Sep 0 0 too few examined
Oct 0 0 too few examined
Nov 0 0 too few examined
Dec 1 1 too few examined

Peak flowering in Feb. Each bar is the share of Astragalus crassicarpus observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 358 of 571 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 6 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Where it actually grows measured, from 1,969 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -16.5 °C -7.5 °C 4.0 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 23.1 °C 30.0 °C 34.7 °C
Annual rainfall 374 mm 761 mm 1,102 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 32 mm 67 mm 200 mm

It is found where winters are severely cold. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 1,969 research-grade observations of Astragalus crassicarpus that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one. Climate from CHELSA V2.1 (Karger et al. 2017); occurrences from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 18 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Astragalus carnosus Nutt.
  • Astragalus caryocarpus Ker Gawl.
  • Astragalus crassicarpus DC.
  • Astragalus crassipes Fraser ex Steud.
  • Astragalus mexicanus A.DC.
  • Astragalus mexicanus var. trichocalyx (Nutt.) Fernald
  • Astragalus prunifer Rydb.
  • Astragalus succulentus Richardson
  • Astragalus succulentus var. paysonii E.H.Kelso
  • Astragalus trichocalyx Nutt.
  • Geoprumnon crassicarpum (Nutt.) Rydb.
  • Geoprumnon mexicanum (A.DC.) Rydb.
  • Geoprumnon succulentum (Richardson) Rydb.
  • Geoprumnon trichocalyx (Nutt.) Rydb.
  • Macrosema succulentum (Richardson) Steven
  • Phaca caryocarpa (Ker Gawl.) MacMill.
  • Tragacantha caryocarpa (Ker Gawl.) Kuntze
  • Tragacantha mexicana (A.DC.) Kuntze

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.