Shrubs
Big sagebrush
The gray-green shrub of Utah's open valleys and basins, and essential to sage grouse.
Cheatgrass
An introduced annual grass that gets a head start on native plants by sprouting in fall.
Cheatgrass arrived in shipments of European wheat in the late 1800s and spread quickly across the West. It is an annual that germinates in the fall and builds roots over winter, so it is ready to grow in early spring while most desert plants are just waking up.
It also uses water efficiently and moves quickly into disturbed ground, especially after wildfire or grazing. The National Park Service says native grasslands are increasingly rare as a result, and that where cheatgrass dominates, biological diversity and soil health decline.
Seeing it
Native bunchgrasses grow in separate clumps; cheatgrass tends to fill the spaces between.