North American Warm Desert Wash

Geology

Small drainages through various substrates.

Landform

Small drainages.

Soils

Various soil types transected by small drainages.

Parent Description

This system occurs on flashy, intermittently flooded, often dry washes and arroyos on lower mountain slopes, plains, and basins. These drainages are often embedded within a matrix of desert shrublands and/or grasslands. Washes may be sparsely vegetated, rocky, gravelly, or sandy drainageways, to patchy shrublands to almost continuous shrublands along the drainages. Woody species found in and adjacent to these washes include Acacia greggii (catclaw), Brickellia laciniata (splitleaf brickellbush), Baccharis salicifolia (seepwillow), Chilopsis linearis (desert willow), Fallugia paradoxa (Apache plume), Rhus microphylla (littleleaf sumac), Juglans microcarpa (little walnut), Fraxinus greggii (little-leaf ash), Leucaena retusa (littleleaf leadtree), Dasylirion leiophyllum (smooth sotol), and Prosopis glandulosa (honey mesquite). Scattered individuals of Celtis laevigata var. reticulata (netleaf hackberry), Chilopsis linearis (desert willow), Salix gooddingii (southwestern black willow), Juglans microcarpa (little walnut), or other species may form a very sparse overstory. Shrubs from the surrounding upland shrubland, such as Larrea tridentata (creosotebush), Viguiera stenoloba (skeleton-leaf golden eye), Flourensia cernua (tarbush) and Juniperus pinchotii (redberry juniper) may be commonly encountered.