Sandy Divide

Description

The plant community is about 85-90% grasses, 10-15% forbs, and 5-10% shrubs (air-dry weight). Mid and tall grasses dominate giving this site a rolling, continuous grassland cover. Tall grasses are scattered throughout the community. This is a mountain muhly, needleandthread, prairie sandreed, big bluestem, Indiangrass, little bluestem tall and midgrass dominate the plant community and produce about 55% of the climax vegetation. There are no significant shrubs on this site.

Plants such as blue grama, sun sedge, prairie Junegrass, western wheatgrass, thickspike wheatgrass, hairy grama, bottlebrush squirreltail, sand dropseed, rose pussytoes, narrowleaf penstemon, Norwegian cinquefoil and woods rose occur in scattered amounts throughout the climax plant community. Minor forbs such as skyrocket gilia, wormwood, Nutall larkspur, drummond milkvetch, sand lily, sand lupine, silvery lupine, and grassy deathcamas are also present in the plant community.

Basal area (the area of ground surface covered by perennial vegetation at ground level) is approximately 25-30%.

Submodel