Astragalus frigidus

Astragalus frigidus, commonly known as cold milkvetch or arctic milkvetch, is a perennial herb in the family Fabaceae with a circumboreal and alpine distribution across northern Europe, Siberia, central Asia, and the mountains of western North America, where it grows in damp meadows, stream banks, snowbed communities, and rocky slopes from the subalpine to alpine zone. The plant arises from a stout woody caudex and slender taproot and produces erect or ascending stems 10 to 40 centimetres tall that are largely glabrous. Leaves are alternate, pinnately compound with seven to thirteen oblong-elliptic to ovate leaflets 1 to 3 centimetres long, smooth above and often sparsely hairy beneath, with conspicuous papery brown stipules sheathing the stem at the base of each leaf. Flowers are borne in loose axillary racemes of five to fifteen, each pendulous and 12 to 18 millimetres long, with a creamy white to pale yellow papilionaceous corolla and a calyx clothed in dark blackish-brown hairs. Pods are pendulous, oblong-ellipsoid, inflated, 1 to 2 centimetres long, sparsely black-hairy, and dehiscent.