Harsh Locations

Possibly the most storied and legendary of western wildflowers, bitterroot has been esteemed as a food plant, a medicine plant, a plant thought to ...

Sicklekeel lupine reminds us of its close relative, riverbank lupine. The two have some physical similarities, and a tolerance for life in difficul...

The common name of this unusual, low-growing, curly-leaved grass refers to the fact that it grows most favorably on impoverished ground, where few ...

Sometimes called “goose tongue” for the long, slender leaves, this saline tolerant native plantain naturally appears along ocean coastlines virtual...

Named for enormous underground tubers that can grow to the size of an adult human, this exceptional native cucumber relative is a perennial vine. ...

The essence of coastal vegetation, American dunegrass (called sea lyme in old speak), is a circumpolar perennial grass, occurring both across the N...

This plant is a quiet remnant of a landscape left behind. Tapping deep into the soil like an old memory, this native legume of the Inland West is a...

Yes, it looks like a dandelion, but, no, it isn’t a dandelion. Larger (up to almost 2-feet tall!), and quite ridiculously popular with many flower ...

Silky lupine shows up where the soil is thin, the sun relentless, and ancient stories are written upon the landscape. Its silver-soft leaves catch ...

Nineleaf biscuitroot possesses a fantastically pleasing form. Structurally it’s comprised of super-attractive slender compound leaflets which look ...

An excellently bunchy, leafy, long-lived western forb of dry, low fertility soils.  Roundleaf alumroot lives life on cliffs, rocky outcrops, and ta...

Don’t let the common name deceive you, this isn’t a sticky plant in the sense that it is very wet or tacky, but rather it is a plant covered in fin...

Beach pea is a quite glorious sprawling perennial adapted to coastal sand and gravel substrates. It emerges clambering from driftwood strewn shores...

Tall cinquefoil establishes itself in dry (sometimes craggy) soils from a sturdy anchoring taproot, wherefrom it emerges as a statuesque and magnif...