Flowers, more than ½ inch across, are shaped like a cultivated sweet pea, with very showy red banner and paler lateral petals and keel. Plants, about 6 inches high, grow in irregular mats. The leaves are pinnate, formed by about 4 pairs of narrow linear leaflets. These and the stems are gray-green and, in most plains specimens, covered with rather silky down. Grows in sandy soil on plains. Blooms May-June.

This, and the quite different looking plants shown on the next three pages, give but a small sample of the pea family, which is one of the largest and most important of the plant groups. More than 150 species in this one family are native to Colorado, and additional ones have been introduced for ornament or food. They take every form and size from the little flat mats of deer clover, shown on the opposite page, to the rank growing clumps of sweet clover that spread themselves along our roads. Beans and alfalfa as well as sweet peas, lupines and even locust trees, all belong to this big family.