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Landscapes that for thousands of years provided native people with nutrition and shelter have changed significantly in the past 200 years. The changes are due largely to our influences.

Many adaptable plants from past centuries thrive today. But, as a growing human population continues to change the landscape some unique and vulnerable habitats such as wetlands and native prairie, and the species they support, are far less common.

Today millions of acres in Montana are also infested with noxious weeds, changing the way both wildlife and humans can use the land.

Learning about Montana’s native plants and the wildlife that depends on them is fun and rewarding and can help us reestablish that link with our natural heritage that native people enjoyed.

Here is a snapshot of a few common plants that once served humans and wildlife. The descriptions are drawn from a field guide titled "Plants of the Rocky Mountains" by Kershaw, MacKinnon and Pojar, published 1998 by Lone Pine Publishing, used by permission.

Beargrass

Xerophyllum tenax  

It grows in large basal clumps of tough, wiry grass-like leaves, with white star-like petals on club-shaped stalks.

Some tribes used the tough, slender leaves to weave hats, baskets and capes. Rodents as well as large mammals such as elk and bighorn sheep eat the flowers and the young seedpods. Bears eat the fleshy leaf shields in spring.  

Common Bearberry or Kinnikinnick

Arctostaphylos uva-ursi 

A trailing evergreen, with alternate spoon-shaped leaves rounded at the tip, dark green and glossy with bright red, berry like fruits.

Bears eat the fruit. The berries of common bearberry are mealy and tasteless. Native people ate them cooked and mixed with grease or fish eggs, or smoked the leaves alone or as a tobacco extender. The leaves are high in tannin and have also been used to tan hides.

Big Sagebrush or

Artemisia tridentata

This is a greyish, aromatic shrub found on dry plains and slopes. Although they can be bitter, the seeds of big sagebrush were eaten raw or dried, often ground into meal and cooked. Mule deer, antelope and elk eat big sagebrush and it serves as important cover for game birds and other small creatures.