• FIRE ECOLOGY OR ADAPTATIONS
• POSTFIRE REGENERATION STRATEGY

FIRE ECOLOGY OR ADAPTATIONS:

Common snowberry is classified as a "survivor" [71,103] and has high resistance to fire [26,73,84]. It is a rhizomatous species with rhizomes buried 2 to 5 inches (5-12.5 cm) deep in mineral soil [50,70,104]. After fire has killed the top of the plant, new growth sprouts from these rhizomes [77,83,118]. This rhizomatous growth response is highly variable and depends on conditions at specific sites [23,77,84]. Regeneration from buried seed is favored by fires of low severity and short duration that remove little of the soil organic level [23,55].

Common snowberry occurs in a wide variety of community/habitat types and plant associations (see DISTRIBUTION AND OCCURENCE frame). There are many fire regimes included within these plant communities [15,31,41,42]. To learn more about fire regimes and fire ecology of communities where common snowberry occurs, refer to the FEIS summary for the dominant species under "FIRE ECOLOGY OR ADAPTATIONS."

Community or Ecosystem	Scientific name of dominant species	Fire return interval in years
Pacific ponderosa pine*	Pinus ponderosa var. ponderosa	1-47 [19]
Rocky Mountain ponderosa pine*	P. ponderosa var. scopulorum	2-10 [19]
Rocky Mountain lodgepole pine*	P. contorta var. latifolia	25-300+ [6,92]
Rocky Mountain Douglas-fir*	Pseudotsuga menziesii var. glauca	40-140 [79,107]
coastal Douglas-fir*	P. menziesii var. menziesii	95-242 [82,91]

* fire return interval varies widely; trends in variation are noted in the species summary

POSTFIRE REGENERATION STRATEGY:

Rhizomatous shrub, rhizome in soil

Related categories for SPECIES: Symphoricarpos albus | Common Snowberry