Single Record

Geobotanical: SSawatch, Garitas, SSanjuans, Culebras, NCristos, UBasin, LBasin

Comments: True to its name, alkali sacaton prefers alkaline substrates but spreads readily to other soils. It takes over disturbed spaces and can be found, for instance in Del Norte (Rio Grande Co), in driveways, along street sides, and in cracks in asphalt parking lots. And true to its Greek generic epithet (Sporobolus, "throw seeds"), it spreads its fruit through ballistic dispersal. In the Watershed, it is common on both sides of the Valley from basin to foothill. Its USA distribution runs from the Canadian to the Mexican border and includes the desert Southwest, the Intermountain region, the Rockies, and most of the Great Plains. Sporobolus airoides follows the Rio Grande drainage through New Mexico (where it has been recorded from nearly every county) on down through Texas to the Gulf of Mexico. The name "sacaton" derives from the Spanish "zacate," which derives from the Nahuatl "zacatl." The seeds are edible by humans, but barely—the Hopi, for instance, ate them only in times of famine.