Native

Three-tip sagebrush is a rounded, freely branching, evergreen shrub. Its leaves are gray-green, long, and deeply cleft into three lobes. The stems are a smooth pale gray. Three-tip sagebrush carries the distinctive sage fragrance, especially when wet. The flowers are green and inconspicuous.

Big sagebrush is a strongly scented, woody evergreen shrub. It is the most abundant shrub in the shrub-steppe because it has adapted to a wide range of environmental conditions. It usually grows about four feet tall, but can grow taller than ten feet in areas with deep soil and more moisture.

Stiff sagebrush is a low mounding shrub, strongly scented with the characteristic sage odor. It is low and spreading with a conspicuously woody base. The base is often heaved from the soil by frost action.

Douglas-fir is one of the world’s strongest, straightest, fastest-growing trees. It is the most abundant tree in the Northwest, and a major commercial lumber species in North America. The wood is relatively heavy, hard, strong, and resilient under stress.

Form:               Bunch grass, in small, widely spaced tufts.

Ponderosa pine bark matures from very dark brown to a light reddish brown, becomes very thick, and, with all its plates and scales, looks like jigsaw puzzle pieces. The bark has a distinctive vanilla smell. The five to eleven inch long needles grow in bunches of three. The back of each scale on the cone is armed with a sharp spike.

Western serviceberry derives its common name not from “serving” but from Sorbus, the Latin name for mountain-ash, because its leaves look much like mountain-ash. It is a large, variable-sized, common shrub in the Sage Hills. In spring, it bears many attractive and fragrant white flowers.

Shooting star has flowers at the top of leafless stems two to sixteen inches tall. The leaves are smooth and oblong, one to six inches long, and grow from the base. The unusual shaped flower is easily identified by the five pink petals pulled back from five colorful stamens, nodding toward earth like a “shooting star”.

Balsamroot is one of the most prevalent and showy plants in the Sage Hills. The bright, yellow “sunflowers” present a widespread colorful display in the spring. The flowers grow singly on the end of a long leafless stem that is one to two feet tall.

Form: Bunch grass; tall, native large wild rye. Largest cool-season perennial bunchgrass native to the western United States. Forms large clumps with dense spikes that resemble wheat.

Height: 3 to 5 feet

Seedhead: Thick bristly 6-inch flower spikes

Seeds: Reproduces by seed and rhizomes