Saltgrass

Distichlis spicata

Bird food

Growing it

When	Flowers June to August; fruits August to September
Type	grass
Sun	Full sun, partial shade
Water	Medium, high
Soil	pH 7–9
Hardiness	zone 3–9
Mature height	0.4 m
Mature spread	0.45 m
Spacing	0.3 m
Years to maturity	2
Bloom	Jun–Aug
Flower colour	Straw / green (grasses & sedges) wind-pollinated, so no showy flower
In bloom	June July August
Fruit	Aug–Sep
Native to	AB, SK

narrow linear leaves about 10 cm long

Where it has been recorded

BothSpecimensObservations

63 squares of about 28 km, each holding at least one record. A square is not a claim that the plant grows throughout it, and an unshaded square is unrecorded rather than empty. Darker squares hold more records, which follows roads and towns as much as it follows the plant. 27 herbarium specimens and 53 field observations this project may redraw. A filled dot is a pressed sheet somebody can re-examine; a hollow ring is a photograph identified by community agreement. Where the dots are dense is where people have looked, not where the plant is commonest, and empty ground is unsurveyed rather than unoccupied. How this map is made.

Which ecoregions the records fall in

Mixed Grassland south AB / SK: 49 records, high confidence
Aspen Parkland central AB / SK: 17 records, medium confidence
Fescue Grassland south AB: 14 records, medium confidence
Moist Mixed Grassland south AB / SK: 13 records, medium confidence
Cypress Upland south AB / SK: 7 records, low confidence
Peace Lowland north AB: 7 records, low confidence
Slave River Lowland north AB: 4 records, low confidence

These are counts of records collected somewhere in the region, which is the resolution of the evidence: the map above shows where inside it. A region with 3 records is not the same claim as one with three hundred, so the count travels with the region. A region missing from this list means nobody has recorded it there, which is not the same as the plant being absent. Records within 900 m of a border count for neither side, because the border is not drawn finely enough to say which one they are on. Source: GBIF occurrence search + PRESERVED_SPECIMEN pass, retrieved 2026-08-24. Boundaries digitised from the National Ecological Framework for Canada v2.2 (Ecological Stratification Working Group 1995), simplified to about 900 m for display: an outline is accurate to roughly a kilometre, not to the metre. How these counts are made.

See every observation, live and current, on GBIF or iNaturalist.

Documented animals

2 documented relationships.

seed for

Northern Shoveler Poelen et al. 2014
Snow Goose Poelen et al. 2014

Also worth knowing

Safety

Toxicity not assessed, absence of a warning is not a guarantee of safety

Edible parts

Seed

Buying it

About $8–$16 per plant (estimate), usually sold as seed or plugs. Estimate (grass default); AB retail as of 2026