High Desert Wild Grass and Flower Seeds

• The high desert's cooler terrain supports drought-tolerant wild grasses that flower. Jupiterimages/Photos.com/Getty Images

  The High Desert of the American Southwest includes the Great Basin and Mojave Deserts that spread through almost all of Nevada and parts of California, Arizona, Utah, Idaho and Oregon. Unlike the Sonoran Desert of Arizona, the Great Basin and Mojave's higher altitudes---with the exception of Death Valley, parts of which are below sea level---provide a cooler but still-arid landscape that supports drought-tolerant wild grasses that flower and bear seedheads.

Big Galetta

• The course blue-green leaves of the Big Galleta clump together in branched clumps that look like shrubs and can reach as high as 40 inches. Sometimes, its leaf blades can look fuzzy. When there is enough water available, it bears yellowish-green blooms from February through June. The Big Galetta's chaffy seeds come in 1.5-to-4-inch spikes that head and drop when mature. Depending on the amount of rain, seed production can be poor. The Big Galetta typically reproduces by rhizomes. This perennial lives a long time, can find water in the soil better than other local grasses and provides food for grazing cattle and sheep.

Indian Ricegrass

• Utah's designated state grass, Indian ricegrass, grows in bunches of slender blades that can stand as tall as 2.5 feet. Indian ricegrass does equally well in open dessert terrain and on foothills. This hardy perennial adapts to a range of soil types except in places with poor drainage. Indian ricegrass bears lone tiny white florets amid dense white hair at the end of slender panicle branches. Blooms readily break off and send seeds flying and shattering. High in protein, the seeds have long been ground into flower by Native Americans. Both the seeds and grass are also an important food source for local grazing animals and birds, particularly during the winter when the lower sections of Indian ricegrass remain green.

Fluffgrass

• With low-lying blue-green leaves covered in what looks like cotton, fluffgrass sprouts 3 to 6 inches tall. Its white blooms unfold from mid-July to mid-September on handfuls of clustered spikelets. Despite its short stature, this rugged perennial stands out where it thrives, in rocky, barren soil in both plains and foothills between 2,000 and 6,000 feet in elevation. It prefers areas with little or variable rainfall. Its design reflects its living conditions. It grows low to the ground because it has shallow roots and could easily lose its grounding from wind or evaporation. The cotton fluff protecting its brittle leaves deflects the heat from the sun. Fluffgrass' sharp-pointed leaves are of little use to livestock but provide foraging for desert tortoises.