Fire Revegetation

Not far from us we had a wildfire this past summer in a sagebrush habitat. You can see some photos of the fire on my friend Jenny's blog. I was going past the other day and decided to stop and take a closer look at what's coming up a couple months after the fire.

The raven had a high vantage point as he looked out over the charred landscape. It was clear that a lot of green was making an appearance.

Bunchgrasses were coming up from the roots. Apparently the fire was fast enough that it left some of the roots intact.

The bunchgrasses were fairly extensive.

I was surprised to see the wild rose emerging. Rose comes up quickly after a fire, but the reason I was surprised was I hadn't known it was there before!

Skunkbush was also emerging in one area.

Desert Boy was happy because he found a bone, and it was slightly charred on one end.

Prickly pear had burned, but small new prickly pear pads were starting to pop out of the ground.

Fortunately I didn't see any cheatgrass. It will undoubtedly come, but it's nice that some native plants have a head start.

One other plant I saw a lot of was this heron's bill. It's sometimes considered to be a weed, but at least it's keeping the ground down!

It was really fascinating to see what's coming up, and I'll have to take a look again and look for changes.