The juniper trees of the Palo Duro Canyon have been its defining feature since the canyon was first discovered by early Spanish explorers. The explorers named the canyon the "Palo Duro," Spanish for "hard wood," due to the abundant juniper and mesquite trees. The Palo Duro Canyon is also full of variety of other trees, shrubs, and wildflowers.
Trees and shrubs along the slopes and terraces include one-seeded juniper, red-berry juniper, small-leaved sumac, lemon sumac, mesquite, hackberry, forestiera, soapberry, wafer ash, and lotebush. Also, cottonwood trees, cedar trees, willow, saltcedar and buttonbush can be found along the floodplains of the Praire Dog Town Fork of the Red River in the canyon bottom.
Mid-grasses include bluestem, sideoats grama, sand dropseed, alkali sacaton, and vine-mesquite. And short grasses include blue grama, hairy grama and buffalo grass. In the canyon bottom, Indian grass, switchgrass, and big blue stem can also be found.
Christmas cactus, sage brush, prickly pear cactus and yucca are also scattered throughout the canyon. And various species of wildflowers are abundant, including Indian blanket, star thistle, sunflower, paperflower, blackfoot daisy and tansy aster.
Of note, some of the trees in the bottom of the North Palo Duro Canyon have been established to be ancient. Many of these ancient trees, scattered throughout the cluster pictured under the Ancient Trees tab below, are located in close proximity to the proposed Link AA line path which would cross the canyon at the point shown in the picture north of the cluster. These trees could easily be damaged or destroyed by activities to maintain the transmission line or by fire caused by the transmission line.
Below are some pictures of the trees, shrubs and wildflowers along various terrains in the North Palo Duro Canyon.
