Plants

The Priest Rapids Project, located in the Columbia Basin in central Washington, is home to a variety of plants, including sagebrush, buckwheat, rabbitbrush and bluebunch wheatgrass. These shrub-steppe plants, common to hot, dry climates, are interspersed with bright yellow balsamroot, purple lupine and white phlox.

Shrub steppe “communities” are amazingly complex, supporting a wide variety of plants, lichens, mosses and animals. Only five percent of the original area covered by shrub steppe is in existence in Washington. The shrub-steppe plants found in the Project vicinity are increasingly rare and so all the more precious.

While shrub-steppe is the most common plant community within the Priest Rapids Project vicinity, a variety of other plant communities are also found on the drier south or west-facing slopes covered by thin rocky layers of soil are known as lithosol habitat and support plants known as the lithosol community. Rocky talus slopes and lush riparian habitats along streams are found throughout the Project vicinity.