• FIRE ECOLOGY OR ADAPTATIONS
• POSTFIRE REGENERATION STRATEGY

FIRE ECOLOGY OR ADAPTATIONS:

Antelope bitterbrush is highly susceptible to fire kill [187]. Some ecotypes sprout following fire, either from dormant buds encircling an aboveground root crown, from calluses of meristematic tissue beneath the bark, or from dormant buds on a belowground lignotuber [75,78]. Very young and very old plants (younger than 5 or older than 40-60 years) do not sprout well [29,154].

Antelope bitterbrush occurs in plant communities with a variety of fire regimes. Pre-settlement fires in the ponderosa pine/antelope bitterbrush habitat type were probably less frequent than in other ponderosa pine types due to lower fuel loading [35,60,68]. Driver and Winston [78] estimate a mean fire interval of 7 to 10 years in a ponderosa pine/bitterbrush/pinegrass habitat in north-central Washington. In a pinyon woodland in the San Bernardino Mountains of California, antelope bitterbrush sprouted and became an early dominant following several wildfires. According to the authors, the fire regime in this pinyon-juniper woodland is predominantly long-interval canopy fires, and vegetation recovers slowly after fire [233]. Fuel loading in sagebrush-bitterbrush and juniper/bitterbrush communities tends to be light except in decadent stands, where extremely dry and windy conditions may result in severe fire [191]. Of four shrub communities east of the Cascade Range in Oregon and California-antelope bitterbrush, big sagebrush, snowbrush ceanothus, and greenleaf manzanita-fuel load was lowest in antelope bitterbrush [155]. The range of fire intervals reported for some species that dominate communities where antelope bitterbrush occurs are listed below. To learn more about the fire regimes in those communities, refer to the FEIS summary for that species, under "FIRE ECOLOGY OR ADAPTATIONS."

Community dominant              Fire interval range 
                                (yrs)
interior ponderosa pine         2-42
   Pinus ponderosa var. scopulorum
Mexican pinyon                  20-70
   Pinus cembroides
Rocky Mountain Douglas-fir      40-140
   Pseudotsuga menziesii var. glauca
curlleaf mountain-mahogany      13-1350
   Cercocarpus ledifolius
Rocky Mountain lodgepole pine   25-300+
   Pinus contorta var. latifolia

POSTFIRE REGENERATION STRATEGY:

Tall shrub, adventitious bud/root crown
Small shrub, adventitious bud/root crown
Initial off-site colonizer (off-site, initial community)

Related categories for SPECIES: Purshia tridentata | Antelope Bitterbrush