• GENERAL DISTRIBUTION
• ECOSYSTEMS
• STATES
• BLM PHYSIOGRAPHIC REGIONS
• KUCHLER PLANT ASSOCIATIONS
• SAF COVER TYPES
• SRM (RANGELAND) COVER TYPES
• HABITAT TYPES AND PLANT COMMUNITIES

GENERAL DISTRIBUTION:

Indian ricegrass is widely distributed throughout the western United States. [18,113]. It occurs east of the Cascade Range from British Columbia south to southern California and northeastern Mexico and east to Alberta, the Dakotas, and Texas [56].

ECOSYSTEMS:

FRES21 Ponderosa pine
FRES29 Sagebrush
FRES30 Desert shrub
FRES34 Chaparral-mountain shrub
FRES35 Pinyon-juniper
FRES38 Plains grasslands
FRES39 Prairie
FRES40 Desert grasslands

STATES:

AR   AZ   CA   CO   ID   KS    MN   MO   MT   NE   NV
NM   ND   OK   OR   SD   TX    UT   WA   WI   WY

BC   MEXICO

BLM PHYSIOGRAPHIC REGIONS:

 3 Southern Pacific Borders
 5 Columbia Plateau
 6 Upper Basin and Range
 7 Lower Basin and Range
 8 Northern Rocky Mountains
 9 Middle Rocky Mountains
10 Wyoming Basin
11 Southern Rocky Mountains
12 Colorado Plateau
13 Rocky Mountain Piedmont
14 Great Plains
15 Black Hills Uplift
16 Upper Missouri Basin and Broken Lands

KUCHLER PLANT ASSOCIATIONS:

K011 Western ponderosa forest
K012 Douglas-fir forest
K016 Eastern ponderosa pine
K019 Arizona pine forest
K023 Juniper-pinyon woodland
K037 Mountain-mahogany-oak scrub
K038 Great Basin sagebrush
K040 Saltbush-greasewood
K039 Blackbrush
K055 Sagebrush steppe
K057 Galleta-three-awn shrubsteppe
K066 Wheatgrass-needlegrass
K075 Nebraska sandhills prairie

SAF COVER TYPES:

220 Rocky Mountain juniper
237 Interior Ponderosa Pine
238 Western Juniper
239 Pinyon-Juniper
240 Arizona Cypress
247 Jeffrey Pine

SRM (RANGELAND) COVER TYPES:

101 Bluebunch wheatgrass
107 Western juniper/big sagebrush/bluebunch wheatgrass
109 Ponderosa pine shrubland
110 Ponderosa pine-grassland
210 Bitterbrush
211 Creosotebush scrub
212 Blackbush
314 Big sagebrush-bluebunch wheatgrass
320 Black sagebrush-bluebunch wheatgrass
322 Curlleaf mountain-mahogany-bluebunch wheatgrass
406 Low sagebrush
401 Basin big sagebrush
402 Mountain big sagebrush
403 Wyoming big sagebrush
405 Black sagebrush
412 Juniper-pinyon woodland
414 Salt desert shrub
415 Curlleaf mountain-mahogany
501 Saltbush-greasewood
502 Grama-galleta
504 Juniper-pinyon pine woodland
602 Bluestem-prairie sandreed
603 Prairie sandreed-needlegrass
604 Bluestem-grama prairie
605 Sandsage prairie
606 Wheatgrass-bluestem-needlegrass
608 Wheatgrass-grama-needlegrass
611 Blue grama-buffalograss
612 Sagebrush-grass
705 Blue grama-galleta
712 Galleta-alkali sacaton

HABITAT TYPES AND PLANT COMMUNITIES:

Indian ricegrass occurs throughout the sagebrush series and is present in several salt-desert shrub communities. It also grows in pinyon-juniper (Pinus-Juniperus spp.) and ponderosa pine (P. ponderosa) forest communities. It is also locally abundant in mixed-grass prairie of Canada and in sagebrush (Artemisia spp.) and desert shrub [21,58,127,129]. Common associates are needle-and-thread grass (Hesperostipa comata), sideoats grama (Bouteloua curtipendula), blue grama (B. grama), and wheatgrass (Triticeae) [58]. Indian ricegrass often grows interspersed in open stands of big sagebrush (A. tridentata) with species such as Thurber needlegrass (S. thurberiana), Sandberg bluegrass (Poa secunda), and bottlebrush squirreltail (Elymus elymoides) [127]. It occurs in black sagebrush (A. nova), winterfat (Krascheninnikovia lanata), and shadscale (Atriplex confertifolia) communities [58,60].

Indian ricegrass has been described as an indicator or dominant species in the following published classifications:

Classification of the forest vegetation of Colorado by habitat type and community type [3]
Forest vegetation on National Forests in the Rocky Mountain and Intermountain Regions: habitat and community types [4]
Classification of the forest vegetation on the National Forests of Arizona and New Mexico [5]
Trends in vegetation development on the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory Site [8]
A classification of forest habitat types of northern New Mexico and southern Colorado [37]
Sagebrush-steppe habitat types in northern Colorado: a first approximation [44]
Phyto-edaphic communities of the Upper Rio Puerco Watershed, New Mexico [45]
A sagebrush community type classification for mountainous northeastern Nevada rangelands [62]
Correlation between soils and sagebrush-dominated plant communities of northeastern Nevada [63]
Soil characteristics of mountainous northeastern Nevada sagebrush community types [64]
Woodland classification: the pinyon-juniper formation [69]
Forest and woodland habitat types (plant associations) of northern New Mexico and northern Arizona [77]
Shrub-steppe habitat types of Middle Park, Colorado [108]
Artemisia arbuscula, A. longiloba, and A. nova habitat types in northern Nevada [132]

Related categories for SPECIES: Achnatherum hymenoides | Indian Ricegrass