Native

Dusty maidens have a highly branched stem up to two feet tall with a compact cluster of one to five inch long leaves at the base. The branches are tipped with white or tan flowers that look like pompoms. These flower heads are made up of tubular white flowers in a dense round cluster.

Thompson’s paintbrush is not a colorful plant, unlike other paintbrushes. The yellow to green “flowers” are actually modified leaves hiding the inconspicuous tubular flowers. The petals fuse into a narrow, elongate tube. The stems are in clusters and usually grow four to sixteen inches tall. Short white hairs cover the stems and leaves.

Sagebrush mariposa lily is showy and grows up to two feet tall, with a beautiful tulip-like flower that displays petals, sepals and stamens in multiples of three. Each plant has one to three flowers, and the lavender petals are pointed at the tip, with a darker violet band at the base.

This small lily grows from a bulb and has one to several white flowers with petals, sepals and stamens in multiples of three. The hairy-edged petals look like a cat’s ear with a purple “eyebrow” at its base.

This low-growing, cushion-like plant has white, pink, or purple flowers that mature and produce distinctive white woolly seed pods. The stems are only two to four inches long. The leaves are the gray-green color of sagebrush. Like all legumes, locoweed helps to fix nitrogen in the soil.

Bugloss fiddleneck is a weedy plant that thrives on disturbed soil. The small yellow tubular-shaped flowers occur along multiple stems up to two feet tall that coil distinctively like the neck of a fiddle. The plant is very hairy and looks like it is covered in fat green hairy caterpillars.

Yarrow has one to several tall upright stems up to three feet tall, narrow fern-like leaves clustered at the base but found on the stem as well, and flat umbrella-shaped clusters of dense white flowers. One of its main characteristics is the odor of the crushed leaves--a strong aromatic herb rather like rosemary and sage.

Wax currant is a compact but erect, many-branched, fragrant shrub that grows about four feet tall. The waxy, gray-green leaves are fan-shaped, generally in three to five less-defined lobes with gently scalloped edges.

Bitterbrush is an extensively-branched, deciduous shrub that grows up to six feet tall. It produces many small three-lobed leaves, similar to those of sagebrush but lacking the gray, woolly hair, and brighter and more of an olive-green in color. The leaves are so tiny that the outline of the shrub’s limbs is distinctive.

Gray rabbitbrush is very common in the Sage Hills. It rivals sagebrush in its wide distribution, but has a more limited range, requiring somewhat moister conditions and sandier soils. It is a deciduous shrub, with long narrow leaves and a height of two to four feet.