A Snowmold Disease of Mountain Big Sagebrush

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Abstract
A sagebrush snowmold disease, induced by an unidentified fungus, results in extensive death of mountain big sagebrush in areas of heavy snow deposition in Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado. A fungus with septate, hyaline hyphae with unique knobby wall projections had been isolated that reproduces field symptoms of snowmold in coldroom inoculation tests. It has not been induced to sporulate in culture. In temperature growth studies the isolate grew from -4 to 24 C, with an optimum near 8-12 C. In southern Wyoming, snowpack temperatures in the sagebrush crown zone ranged from -4 to -16 C in early winter; in late winter the snowpack warms and becomes isothermal at 0 C.