Plant Species ?

[South Park]

  In the current photo on the main page of the train at Dillon,
what is the brush in the foreground ?  Is that sage ?

[Jeff Young]

Looks like sagebrush to me.  

Note that sagebrush (of the genus Artemisia) and sage (of the genus Salvia) are different.

[South Park]

  My guess is Artemesia Tridentata, or "Big Sage", "Basin Sage" etc.
It grows all over the west and is the quintessential "sagebrush" when
one imagines cowboys and westerns.  It grows all over my area.  I
transplanted one (not easy to do) into my yard that has grown HUGE
with the water it gets here.

  I just do not remember ever seeing this shrub growing in the high
country like the South Park.

[Jim Courtney]

I just do not remember ever seeing this shrub growing in the high country like the South Park.

Perhaps not in the South Park, S.P., but I recall that it was all over the place along the lower Blue, in the Dickey-Dillon-Keystone area.

[South Park]

  Interesting ...  I love sage brush.  I mean, who else has it purposely
planted in their yard ?  If it grows on the South Park, I guess I missed
it !  Since my DSP&P interest has alway been more about the mainline
to Gunnison than the Highline route, that is where I have spent most
of my exploration time.  I still have a gnarled Potentilla that I dug out
of the ditch near Weston-Garos as a tiny sprig in 1977.  It survived a
road trip to NC and back to Washington, and has been moved 20 times
since.

[Robert McFarland]

Don't forget that Weston and Garos are just about 3 miles from each other.As large as South Park is I think it would be safe to say that soil and plant life are not a one size fits all situation-and I'm no expert in either.

[skip]

And if you are somewhere in the western US, and you need some cottonwoods to line your track along whatever canyon you are modeling, a dead sagebrush plant gives you just about the best tree armature that one can find.

Skip Egdorf
Los Alamos, NM
Where the Pajareto plateau is covered with this stuff.