Plants up to 15-40 cm tall. Stems several, up to 20 cm, branched, loosely covered with subappressed white hairs 0.1-0.3 mm and with some black hairs. Leaves 5-8 cm; stipules 3-5 mm, free from each other, sparsely black and white hairy; petiole 1-2 cm, like rachis sparsely covered with subappressed to ascending black and white hairs up to 0.3 mm; leaflets in 5-7(-9) pairs, narrowly elliptic, 7-20 × 1.5-4(-6) mm, abaxially loosely hairy, adaxially glabrous, apex obtuse to shortly acumi­nate. Racemes 2-4.5 cm, densely 10- to many flowered; pedun­cle 5-10 cm, loosely covered with subappressed white and toward raceme increasingly black hairs; bracts whitish membra­nous, 1-3 mm, sparsely black or black and white hairy. Calyx 3-4 mm, loosely to rather densely covered with subappressed predominantly black hairs up to 0.8 mm; teeth 1.5-2 mm. Pet­als yellow, fading reddish; standard elliptic to rhombic-elliptic, 7-8 × ca. 3.5 mm, apex slightly incised; wings 5-6 mm, limbs asymmetrically incised; keel 4-5 mm. Legume subsessile, nearly globose, ca. 3 mm in diam., rounded ventrally and dor­sally, nearly beakless, 2-locular; valves rather thick, covered rather densely with ascending white hairs intermixed with black hairs. Seeds 2.

Astragalus mahoschanicus var. mengdaensis Y. H. Wu (Acta Bot. Yunnan. 20: 40. 1998) and A. mahoschanicus var. multipilosus Y. H. Wu (loc. cit.: 39) do not agree with A. mahoschanicus or with the species A. longiracemosus and A. luteiflorus, all occurring in Qinghai Province. Without having seen the types, it is not possible to get a clear opinion about their taxonomic status.

● 1800-4500 m. Gansu, Nei Mongol, Ningxia, Qinghai, Sichuan, Xinjiang.