Letterman's needlegrass occurs throughout most of the western United States and British Columbia. It can be found in Washington eastward to Montana and southward to southeastern California, Arizona, and New Mexico [1,2,5,8,11,13,15,21,22,24,27,28,33,35,37,38,40,41,44,46,47,48,51,53,55,56,57,65,66,67].
206 Engelmann spruce-subalpine fir
210 Interior Douglas-fir
211 White fir
213 Grand fir
218 Lodgepole pine
220 Rocky Mountain Juniper
237 Interior ponderosa pine
239 Pinyon-juniper
244 Pacific ponderosa pine-Douglas-fir
245 Pacific ponderosa pine
Letterman's needlegrass can be found in a wide range of habitat types from open stands of quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides) and conifers to subalpine grasslands to sagebrush (Artemisia spp.)/grass ranges [8,15,19,21,34,37,38,63,65]. Classifications describing plant communities in which Letterman's needlegrass is a dominant species are as follows:
The plant communities of the big cottonwood canyon drainage [1]
Classification and ordination of seral communities [53]
Sagebrush steppe [71]
It is an important species in many early- to late-seral and subclimax plant communities in Idaho [53]. It occurs as an understory dominant with numerous trees and shrubs including Rocky Mountain ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa var. scopulorum) [35,67], Rocky Mountain Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii var. glauca) [35], Rocky Mountain lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta var. latifolia) [65], singleleaf pinyon (Pinus monophylla), Utah juniper (Juniperus osteosperma) [42], quaking aspen, basin big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata var. tridentata) [35,57], mountain big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata var. vaseyana) [44,51], pale serviceberry (Amelanchier alnifolia var. pallida) [53,67], and green rabbitbrush (Chrysothamnus viscidiflorus) [1,22,53]. It also grows as a codominant with many grasses and forbs such as Columbia needlegrass (Achnatherum nelsonii ssp. dorei) [31,53], needle-and-thread grass (Hesperostipa comata) [35,67], bluebunch wheatgrass (Pseudoroegneria spicata) [53,55,57,67], Idaho fescue (Festuca idahoensis) [53,64,67], Thurber fescue (Festuca thurberi) [33,64], Sandberg bluegrass (Poa secunda) [1,54,67], Kentucky bluegrass (Poa pratensis) [31,53], cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum) [67,68], bottlebrush squirreltail (Elymus elymoides) [35,55,67], capitate sedge (Carex capitata), and tailcup lupine (Lupinus caudatus) [53].
Related categories for
SPECIES: Achnatherum lettermanii
| Letterman Needlegrass
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Courtesy: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research
Station, Fire Sciences Laboratory. Fire Effects Information System
