Thought I learned something new on the sage grouse tour last Friday.

Now I'm not so sure.

Point of the tour, as explained to me, was to look at a strutting ground that is doing well, and an area where a lek has disappeared.

Okay. I can do that. Took them to my largest lek (190 cocks this spring), which is looking the best that it has since the early 1980s. And then we went east, just eight or nine miles, to a lek that disappeared around twenty years ago. In fact, we've got a whole flat basin that lost its breeding sage grouse, right in between a couple higher places where the sage grouse are thriving.

But hey, folks, don't ask me why. If I knew why, we would have solved the sage grouse problem a long time ago, and we'd all be worrying about something else today instead of going on a tour of sage grouse habitats.

Mind you, the low desert basin is not devoid of sage grouse. You can still find them there, and a radio'd hen from the active leks to the east flew all the way into this country to nest.

They just don't breed here any more.

The increase in 24/7 traffic on the highway and the drilling for oil might have had something to do with it.

Or maybe not.

Aaanyway, that's not the point of this entry. The point is this.

This flower.

I've been calling it a "vetch".

Last Friday I learned I was wrong.

Or, maybe not.

Had a couple real plant experts along on the tour. Folks who make their living knowing what these growing things are, what likes to eat them and what doesn't, how much is too little on the ground, and how do we grow more.

They know their stuff.

Now, vetches are in the pea family. As are the locoweeds. One is genus Oxytropus, the other Astragalus.

To tell the two apart, you look at the keel of their flower. That clitoral-looking thing in the middle of the flower.

If it's pointed, it's Oxytropus.

Rounded, it's Astragalus.

Oookay. Easy enough to remember. The genus beginning with a pointed letter (A) has the rounded keel, and the genus beginning with a round letter (O) has the pointed keel.

Then it got confusing. Both experts said the Astragalus plants are the locoweeds.

And the Oxytropus, the vetches.

Whoa. In college, I learned it the other way. One of my favorite plants was a gorgeous red-violet (my favorite colour of crayon) Oxytropus, Colorado loco.

But taxonomists change things, on a glacial time scale, so I took this new knowledge to heart.

Pointed keel = Oxytropus = vetch.

Rounded keel = Astragalus = locoweed.

And decided to pass this new knowledge on in an entry (I just know there are many of you out there wanting to examine the clitoral-like parts of pea plants).

Just for fun, I checked my plant reference books, first.

The scientific checklist says Astragalus is a vetch. A milkvetch to be exact. Not locoweed. And it calls Oxytropus "crazyweed", not locoweed.

But the touristy field guide calls Astragalus locoweed. And Oxytropus is again "crazyweed" (which I'd never heard of).

The Canadian book, however, has Astragalus as vetches, and Oxytropus as the locoweed.

And no, I didn't go to university in Canada.

So, so much for my plan of passing on new-found knowledge. And just as I have for spelling the word "colour", I have decided to keep my apparently Canadian classification for vetches and locos.

And have quit molesting those flowers, checking their keels.