Description

This plant is a perennial herb producing several erect stems from its

caudex A caudex (plural: caudices) of a plant is a stem, but the term is also used to mean a rootstock and particularly a basal stem structure from which new growth arises.pages 456 and 695 In the strict sense of the term, meaning a stem, "caudex" is m ...

. It grows to in height. The taproot is thick and woody, and it has

rhizome In botany and dendrology, a rhizome (; , ) is a modified subterranean plant stem that sends out roots and shoots from its nodes. Rhizomes are also called creeping rootstalks or just rootstalks. Rhizomes develop from axillary buds and grow hori ...

s which can produce new stems. The leaves are each divided into a number of leaflets up to long. The inflorescence is a dense

raceme A raceme ( or ) or racemoid is an unbranched, indeterminate type of inflorescence bearing flowers having short floral stalks along the shoots that bear the flowers. The oldest flowers grow close to the base and new flowers are produced as the s ...

of flowers. The flowers are pink or pale purple and up to long.S.G. Aiken, et al. 1999 onwards
''Hedysarum alpinum'' var. ''alpinum''.
Flora of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago: Descriptions, Illustrations, Identification, and Information Retrieval. Version: 29 April 2003. Retrieved 11-22-2011. The flowers are pollinated by insects such as the bumblebee and honeybee. The fruit is a flat

legume A legume () is a plant in the family Fabaceae (or Leguminosae), or the fruit or seed of such a plant. When used as a dry grain, the seed is also called a pulse. Legumes are grown agriculturally, primarily for human consumption, for livestock f ...

pod which is narrowed between the seeds, with as many as 9 segments.

Distribution and habitat

This plant generally grows in the

boreal Boreal may refer to: Climatology and geography *Boreal (age), the first climatic phase of the Blytt-Sernander sequence of northern Europe, during the Holocene epoch *Boreal climate, a climate characterized by long winters and short, cool to mild ...

and northern temperate climates. It occurs in tundra and taiga habitat types, in floodplains, grasslands, and dry forests. It is well adapted to calcareous soils. It is usually not a dominant species but it is considered dominant in several river deltas and plains in Alaska. It is a pioneer species on floodplains that have been recently scoured by water and ice. It grows with willows and

birches A birch is a thin-leaved deciduous hardwood tree of the genus ''Betula'' (), in the family Betulaceae, which also includes alders, hazels, and hornbeams. It is closely related to the beech-oak family Fagaceae. The genus ''Betula'' contains 30 to ...

along waterways and in forests dominated by spruces. It grows on grasslands with grass species such as little bluestem (''Schizachyrium scoparium''),

Canada bluegrass ''Poa compressa'', the Canada bluegrass or flattened meadow-grass, is a perennial flattened meadow grass, similar to common meadow-grass, ''Poa pratensis''. It is native to Europe but it can be found nearly worldwide as an introduced species. I ...

(''Poa compressa''), and American dunegrass (''Leymus mollis'').

Ecology

Alpine sweetvetch is an important source of food for many types of animals, including black bears,

grizzly bear The grizzly bear (''Ursus arctos horribilis''), also known as the North American brown bear or simply grizzly, is a population or subspecies of the brown bear inhabiting North America. In addition to the mainland grizzly (''Ursus arctos horri ...

s, American bison, moose, Dall's sheep, and

caribou Reindeer (in North American English, known as caribou if wild and ''reindeer'' if domesticated) are deer in the genus ''Rangifer''. For the last few decades, reindeer were assigned to one species, ''Rangifer tarandus'', with about 10 subspe ...

. Bears are adept at digging up the nutritious roots. The roots are a primary food for grizzly bears in some areas, such as

Banff National Park Banff National Park is Canada's oldest National Parks of Canada, national park, established in 1885 as Rocky Mountains Park. Located in Alberta's Rockies, Alberta's Rocky Mountains, west of Calgary, Banff encompasses of mountainous terrain, wi ...

. In parts of Alaska this plant is a primary food for Dall's sheep and caribou. Many small mammals, such as voles and short-tailed weasels eat it, and a variety of birds nest in alpine sweetvetch habitat.

Use by humans

Native Alaskan peoples used and still use the plant for food, particularly the fleshy roots. The roots are said to taste like young

carrot The carrot ('' Daucus carota'' subsp. ''sativus'') is a root vegetable, typically orange in color, though purple, black, red, white, and yellow cultivars exist, all of which are domesticated forms of the wild carrot, ''Daucus carota'', nat ...

s. The Inupiat people call the plant wild potato and obtain

dietary fiber Dietary fiber (in British English fibre) or roughage is the portion of plant-derived food that cannot be completely broken down by human digestive enzymes. Dietary fibers are diverse in chemical composition, and can be grouped generally by the ...

from the roots. Alpine sweetvetch is the most important food source for the Dena'ina people after wild fruit species. The

Eskimo Eskimo () is an exonym used to refer to two closely related Indigenous peoples: the Inuit (including the Alaska Native Iñupiat, the Greenlandic Inuit, and the Canadian Inuit) and the Yupik peoples, Yupik (or Siberian Yupik, Yuit) of eastern Si ...

train dogs to locate stores of roots that have been cached by mice.''Hedysarum alpinum''.
Native American Ethnobotany Database. Retrieved 2016-12-10. The roots may be eaten raw or prepared in a number of ways, including boiling, roasting, and frying in grease. They are stored in

lard Lard is a semi-solid white fat product obtained by rendering the fatty tissue of a pig.Lard
entry in the o ...

or oil and eaten when other food stores run out. The seeds should not be eaten raw, or in large quantity, as they contain L-canavanine, which may have led or contributed to the death of Christopher McCandless. Research into the veracity of this theory is ongoing.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q247393 Hedysareae Plants described in 1753 Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus