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

GENERAL DISTRIBUTION:

Grouse whortleberry grows from British Columbia, mostly east of the Cascades, southward to California. It extends eastward to Alberta and Montana and occurs throughout the Rocky Mountains southward to Colorado, Utah, and northern New Mexico [59]. A disjunct population of grouse whortleberry grows in the Black Hills of South Dakota [18,62]. The Natural Resources Conservation Service provides a map of grouse whortleberry's distribution in the United States (http://plants.usda.gov/).

ECOSYSTEMS [42]:

FRES20 Douglas-fir
FRES21 Ponderosa pine
FRES22 Western white pine
FRES23 Fir-spruce
FRES24 Hemlock-Sitka spruce
FRES25 Larch
FRES26 Lodgepole pine
FRES37 Mountain meadows

STATES:

AZ	CA	CO	ID	MT	NV
NM	OR	SD	UT	WA	WY
BC	AB

BLM PHYSIOGRAPHIC REGIONS [15]:

1 Northern Pacific Border
2 Cascade Mountains
3 Southern Pacific Border
4 Sierra Mountains
5 Columbia Plateau
6 Upper 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

KUCHLER [75] PLANT ASSOCIATIONS:

K003 Silver fir-Douglas-fir forest
K004 Fir-hemlock forest
K005 Mixed conifer forest
K007 Red fir forest
K011 Western ponderosa forest
K012 Douglas-fir forest
K014 Grand fir-Douglas-fir forest
K015 Western spruce-fir forest
K016 Eastern ponderosa forest
K017 Black Hills pine forest
K018 Pine-Douglas-fir forest
K020 Spruce-fir-Douglas-fir forest
K021 Southwestern spruce-fir forest

SAF COVER TYPES [37]:

205 Mountain hemlock
206 Engelmann spruce-subalpine fir
207 Red fir
208 Whitebark pine
210 Interior Douglas-fir
211 White fir
212 Western larch
213 Grand fir
215 Western white pine
218 Lodgepole pine
219 Limber pine
224 Western hemlock
227 Western redcedar-western hemlock
237 Interior ponderosa pine

SRM (RANGELAND) COVER TYPES [114]:

216 Montane meadows

HABITAT TYPES AND PLANT COMMUNITIES:

Grouse whortleberry often dominates the shrub layer of subalpine forests throughout the Rocky Mountains. Common overstory dominants are subalpine fir (Abies lasiocarpa), Rocky Mountain lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta var. latifolia), mountain hemlock (Tsuga mertensiana), whitebark pine (P. albicaulis), Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii), Engelmann spruce (Picea engelmannii), white spruce (P. glauca), grand fir (A. grandis), western larch (Larix occidentalis), western redcedar (Thuja plicata), and limber pine (P. flexilis) [41,99,115,118,122,137]. Grouse whortleberry also grows in association with subalpine larch (L. lyallii) in Montana [9] and interior ponderosa pine (P. ponderosa var. scopulorum) in the Black Hills [62,127]. In the Cascade Mountains of Oregon, grouse whortleberry occurs commonly with mountain hemlock, Shasta red fir (A. magnifica var. shastensis), western white pine (P. monticola), and Pacific silver fir (A. amabilis) [89].

In the Rocky Mountains common understory associates of grouse whortleberry include twinflower (Linnaea borealis), queencup beadlily (Clintonia uniflora), beargrass (Xerophyllum tenax), prince's pine (Chimaphila umbellata), lupine (Lupinus spp.), woodrush (Luzula hitchcockii), western meadowrue (Thalictrum occidentale), bluejoint reedgrass (Calamagrostis canadensis), pinegrass (C. rubescens), sedges (Carex spp.), and heartleaf arnica (Arnica cordifolia). Associated woody species include big huckleberry (V. membranaceum), dwarf bilberry (V. myrtillus), bearberry (Arctostaphylos uva-ursi), pachistima (Pachistima myrsinites), menziesia (Menziesia ferruginea), snowberry (Symphoricarpos spp.), gooseberries (Ribes spp.), and Oregon-grape (Mahonia repens) [14,21,60,99,115,118].

Common associated species reported for Oregon and Washington include queencup beadlily, twinflower, woodrush, pinegrass, beargrass, sedges, bearberry, big huckleberry, menziesia, dwarf huckleberry (Vaccinium caespitosum), bunchberry (Cornus canadensis), Cascade's rhododendron (Rhododendron albiflorum), white spirea (Spiraea betulifolia), and red mountainheath (Phyllodoce empetriformis) [66,68]

Because grouse whortleberry is frequent and abundant in the understory of late-seral, climax, or old-growth montane forests, many published vegetation classifications include it as a community indicator or dominant. A partial list of references is included below by state.

Arizona [90]
Colorado [5,12,35,56,57,60,61,73,136]
Idaho [24,32,118]
Montana [99,110]
New Mexico [35,90]
Oregon [11,41,45,47,53,54,63,67,133]
South Dakota [62,119]
Utah [55,92]
Washington [2,31,32,41,45,47,141]
Wyoming [62,102,103,136,142]

Related categories for SPECIES: Vaccinium scoparium | Grouse Whortleberry