Related Article 11 Things You Didn’t Know About Saguaro Cacti Up close, you can see the small flowers on the stalks of a Wyoming big sagebrush. “It’s literally the foundational shrub of this whole huge, cold desert area.”Ī closeup of a sagebrush's narrow segmented leaves reveals its tiny silver hairs. “It’s one of the only things around here that’s really green all year round,” says Elizabeth Leger, professor and director of the Museum of Natural History at the University of Nevada, Reno. This keystone plant supports over 350 species, including the adorable pygmy rabbit and charismatic greater sage-grouse. Sagebrush growing here creates the largest interconnected habitat in North America, spanning across 175 million acres. But this delicate bush is an essential native plant for desert wildlife-and it’s under threat.Įighteen sagebrush species grow throughout North America’s Great Basin, a massive network of watersheds and prairies that spans the arid lands of Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Oregon, and California. “They kind of look like tortured little bonsai trees,” says Kathryn Turner, an evolutionary ecologist and assistant professor at Idaho State University. Growing as tall as your thigh, their lanky limbs seem frozen in a permanently petrified stance. In the dry landscape of the American West, the sun catches the plant’s fine silver hair like light reflecting off a stormy ocean. The big sagebrush is far from your typical tumbleweed. Credit: Tom Koerner/USFWS Mountain-Prairie/Flickr/Public Domain Taken in Arapaho National Wildlife Refuge in Colorado. Like a frothy sea, these mint green to pale blue plants sweep across the dry, vast vistas of America's Intermountain West.
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