NORTHERN DESERT VEGETATION Northern desert vegetation typifies the eastern Great Basin in western Utah between about 4,000 feet and 5,000 feet elevation. Sagebrush generally dominates, but other shrubs such as rabbit brush may be dominant in some areas. The shrubs are commonly deciduous. However, sagebrush tends to retain some leaves through the winter. The leaves of northern desert shrubs are relatively small and silvery. Stems are woody and seldom exceed fifty years in age. Ten to fifteen inches of precipitation comes largely during the winter; some areas, however, receive less than eight inches of annual precipitation. Some common plants encountered in this habitat include big sagebrush--leaves aromatic, wedge-shaped, with three teeth at the end, covered with silky-silvery hairs; black sagebrush--dull grayish shrub with tall, naked spike-like flowers above herbage; shadscale or saltbrush; matchweed or snakeweed--shrubby plant sending up many slender herbaceous brittle spines, small yellow flowers with both ray and disc flowers, if consumed in large quantities can be poisonous to livestock; winterfat--stems and leaves star shaped and covered with short hairs; hopsage--shrubs 1-3 feet high with spiny branches; bud sagebrush--spiny shrub, crowded small leaves; mat saltbush--low mat-like plant of ashen or soil color; gray molly--woody at base, tall plant, leaves thin, blades lanceolate, flowers solitary or few in the axis of the leaf stems.