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Wildlife, Animals, and Plants |
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DISTRIBUTION AND OCCURRENCE
GENERAL DISTRIBUTION:Medusahead is native to the Mediterranean region of Europe. It was introduced into the U.S. in the 1880s [24,28,40,43] but did not spread rapidly until the 1950s [45]. Medusahead is now established throughout the U.S. and Canada [62]. It is most common in the western U.S. from British Columbia south to California and east to Idaho [15,34,53,89,90,96,109,112]. The PLANTS database provides a distributional map of medusahead in the United States.
ECOSYSTEMS [41]:FRES21 Ponderosa pine FRES22 Western white pine FRES23 Fir-spruce FRES24 Hemlock-Sitka spruce FRES25 Larch FRES26 Lodgepole pine FRES29 Sagebrush FRES35 Pinyon-juniper
STATES:
BLM PHYSIOGRAPHIC REGIONS [8]:2 Cascade Mountains 3 Southern Pacific Border 4 Sierra Mountains 6 Upper Basin and Range 8 Northern Rocky Mountains 16 Upper Missouri Basin and Broken Lands
KUCHLER [66] PLANT ASSOCIATIONS:K001 Spruce-cedar-hemlock forest K002 Cedar-hemlock-Douglas-fir forest K003 Silver fir-Douglas-fir forest K004 Fir-hemlock forest K008 Lodgepole pine-subalpine forest K011 Western ponderosa forest K012 Douglas-fir forest K013 Cedar-hemlock-pine forest K014 Grand fir-Douglas-fir forest K015 Western spruce-fir forest K025 Alder-ash forest K038 Great Basin Sagebrush K055 Sagebrush steppe
SAF COVER TYPES [35]:218 Lodgepole pine 219 Limber pine 220 Rocky Mountain juniper 237 Interior ponderosa pine 238 Western juniper 239 Pinyon-juniper 245 Pacific ponderosa pine 247 Jeffrey pine
SRM (RANGELAND) COVER TYPES [92]:101 Bluebunch wheatgrass 102 Idaho fescue 104 Antelope bitterbrush-bluebunch wheatgrass 107 Western juniper/big sagebrush/bluebunch wheatgrass 109 Ponderosa pine shrubland 110 Ponderosa pine-grassland 401 Basin big sagebrush 402 Mountain big sagebrush 403 Wyoming big sagebrush 406 Low sagebrush 408 Other sagebrush types 412 Juniper-pinyon woodland 606 Wheatgrass-bluestem-needlegrass 607 Wheatgrass-needlegrass 608 Wheatgrass-grama-needlegrass
HABITAT TYPES AND PLANT COMMUNITIES:Medusahead and cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum), another invasive non-native species, overlap in distribution and habitat requirements. Each can replace other herbaceous vegetation and share dominance with the other. Cheatgrass occupies a larger geographical area than medusahead, which extends to drier areas of the semi-arid western U.S. [28]. Medusahead maintain its dominance on sites where native vegetation has been eliminated or severely reduced by overgrazing, cultivation, or frequent fires [93]. It has invaded seral communities in eastern Oregon and Idaho and replaced cheatgrass as the dominant alien grass [53]. It has invaded fields, dry roadsides, and disturbed sagebrush slopes in British Columbia, Washington, Idaho, Oregon, and California [25,54,56]. Great Basin: | Medusahead On sagebrush (Artemisia spp.)-dominated habitats in western Great Basin, medusahead usually invades sites already infested with cheatgrass [71,84,100,108,109]. In California, medusahead colonies often border low sagebrush (Artemisia arbuscula ssp. longicaulis) communities [10]. Associated grasses in sagebrush-dominated communities with a medusahead component include bottlebrush squirreltail (Elymus elymoides), Sandberg bluegrass (Poa secunda) [109], foxtail fescue (Festuca megalura), bluebunch wheatgrass (Pseudoroegneria spicata), and crested wheatgrass (Agropyron desertorum) [7,44,45,47,74,90]. Forbs associated with medusahead in the Great Basin include sunflower (Helianthus annuus) [89,109], panicle willowweed (Epilobium paniculatum), and gumweed (Grindelia nana) [109]. A Nevada study found that sites with sparse native plants are more susceptible to medusahead invasion than more diverse low sagebrush (Artemisia arbuscula) or woodland/low sagebrush communities. If the more diverse communities are degraded to a "low" seral state, medusahead can invade and occupy the site. Young and others [110] determined that low sagebrush communities are most susceptible to medusahead invasion, while big sagebrush (A. tridentata) communities are more resistant [109]. Pacific Northwest: | Medusahead Forbs commonly associated with medusahead in this region include yellow starthistle (Centaurea solstitialis), western yarrow (Achillea millefolium), and arrowleaf balsamroot (Balsamorhiza sagittata) [7,85,91]. Grasses associated with medusahead include bluebunch wheatgrass and crested wheatgrass [45]. A bristly dogstail grass (Cynosurus schinatus)/medusahead association has been described for cattle and domestic sheep rangelands in the Umpqua River Basin of Oregon. Medusahead is also described as a dominant understory species in Oregon white oak/poison-oak (Quercus garryana/Toxicodendron diversilobum)/medusahead woodlands of the Umpqua River Basin [93]. Northern California study sites from Fall River Mills to Davis Creek, established after a wildfire, showed that medusahead formed extensive colonies on sites formerly dominated by ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) or western juniper (Juniperus occidentalis) [109].
Related categories for SPECIES: Taeniatherum caput-medusae | Medusahead |
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