This is part of an ongoing series, Species of the Week, and is cross-posted as Biodiversions at The Clade. It’s also included in Carnival of the Arid #6 at Coyote Crossing.
One of the things I like about writing regular posts on various species is that it challenges my own tendency to overlook or take for granted species that are common, mundane, or unpopular.
- Sagebrush near Sisters, Oregon
Last week, I had the good fortune to take a brief vacation in the high desert country of Central Oregon. I decided it was time to learn more about a plant I see everywhere throughout the Great Basin but know little about: Artemesia tridentata, or sagebrush.
My first challenge was identifying the plant. Like so many who have driven hundreds of miles over flat, arid lands in Eastern Oregon and Washington, or Nevada’s basin and range, or the Colorado plateau, I thought I knew my sagebrush. But when I tried to find a single plant to photograph, I floundered. There were a lot of brushy plants, but which one was sagebrush? My eye first wandered to rabbitbrush. Then there was bitterbrush. All contribute to the glorious variations in texture and color of the sagebrush sea in some areas, but they are distinct from sagebrush.
- Sagebrush in bloom, Nevada. Photo courtesy of Sandra Powers.
My second challenge was wading through the sea of conflicting information on sagebrush. Like so much in the West, sagebrush is controversial. The plant is the climax species for an ecosystem that once covered 150 million acres – or nearly half – of the American West. This ecosystem still has the largest habitat range in the United States and covers major parts of eleven western states. Yet sagebrush steppe is one of the most endangered ecosystems in the world.
Huh? How can something so vast be so endangered?
The sagebrush plant is not likely to disappear soon. However, as the Pacific Northwest Research Station puts it, the ecosystem it supports is “suffering death by a thousand cuts”: overgrazing, energy development, cheatgrass and juniper invasions, high intensity fires (fueled by cheatgrass and juniper), and off-road vehicle use.
Some claim sagebrush is a weed, and there’s too much of it. But that’s because in the American West, weeds are often defined as plants useless for grazing cattle. Sagebrush is actually nutritious and cattle may eat it, but it contains volatile oils that disagree with their digestive systems. And sagebrush may be encroaching on lands that ranchers historically developed as pasture land. However, a longer historical view suggests that sagebrush is simply reclaiming its former range.
In their journals, Lewis and Clark recorded seeing what they called “wild hysop”when they passed through Montana in 1805:
the wild hysop [sagebrush] grows here and in all the country through which we have past for many days; tho from big Dry river to this place, it has been more abundant than below, and a smaller variety of it grows on the hills, the leaves of which differ considerably, being more deeply indented near it’s extremity. The buffaloe deer and elk feed on this herb in the winter season as they do also on the small willows of the sandbars.
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A sagebrush “sea” in central Oregon with the Three Sisters behind. Sandra Powers, who blogs on the Nevada desert at “Looking for Detachment” points out that the foreground is dominated by brighter-green rabbitbrush, while the grayer sagebrush is mostly behind, closer to the trees.
Sagebrush is not great for cattle, but a healthy sagebrush ecosystem supports a diversity of plant life, including many bunchgrasses and wildflowers, and abundant animal life. At least 90 bird and 85 animal species depend on sagebrush ecosystems for food and cover. Pronghorn antelope evolved in association with sagebrush and forage heavily on the plant. Elk and mule deer also browse it in varying degrees depending on what else is available. The sage grouse feeds exclusively on sagebrush in the winter and relies on the habitat it creates throughout the year. The nearly extinct Columbia Basin pygmy rabbit lives exclusively in disappearing sagebrush habitat in Eastern Washington.
For more information:
“Sagebrush in Western North American: Habitats and Species in Jeopardy” (Report by Pacific Northwest Research Station)
Sagebrush Bulletin (on sagebrush ecology in Montana)
Sagebrush Ecology – Roots (brief video)
Photographs of sagebrush throughout American West from Terra Galleria.
I just love sagebrush (except for my allergies to it) and other sage-country bushes. Glad you’ve written this post – so often the standard plants get overlooked like you said. And thanks, indeed, for the link!
And thank you for helping me improve my shrubby desert plant id skills. I’m usually pretty good at distinguishing one plant from another, but grasses and woody desert plants perplex me. That photo of sagebrush in bloom you allowed me to use is beautiful and may help me remember what to look for in the high desert in September.
Super post! It’s so true that we tend to overlook something that’s all around us. You had some neat info about sagebrush that I didn’t know about. Thanks.
Desert Survivor — Thanks for the comment. Being only a now and then visitor to the high desert, I still have a lot to learn about sagebrush. But it was fun doing some research and discovering things I didn’t know.