General: Common Mediterranean Grass (Schismus barbatus) is a short, upright grass that grows in individual clumps (bunches) in the deserts around Las Vegas. The clumps, however, can be so dense as to nearly cover the ground.
This grass sprouts early in the spring, grows quickly, then sets seed and dies, leaving what can be a dense carpet of dry grass that carries fires in areas that once rarely burned because the shrubs were spread too far apart. Because it burns so easily, Mediterranean Grass and other non-native grass threaten to help change the Mojave Desert from a shrub-dominated landscape to an open grassland.
Mediterranean Grass is a common component of vegetation associations in the Lower Sonoran (Creosote-Bursage Flats) and Upper Sonoran (Mojave Desert Scrub) life zones. |