Artemisia campestris
Artemisia furcata
beach wormwood, field sagewort, field wormwood, northern wormwood, Pacific sagewort, sand wormwood
fork wormwood, three-fork mugwort, three-fork wormwood
usually 1–5, turning reddish brown, (often ribbed) tomentose or glabrous.
(flowering) 1–5, erect, light brown, simple, strigillose or glabrate.
persistent or deciduous, mostly basal;
basal blades 4–12 cm;
cauline gradually reduced, 2–4 × 0.5–1.5 cm, 2–3-pinnately lobed, lobes linear to narrowly oblong, apices acute, faces densely to sparsely white-pubescent.
basal (in rosettes) and cauline, gray-green;
blades oval, 2–10(–12) cm (basal) or 1–1.5 × 0.4–0.6 cm (cauline), 1–3-palmately lobed, faces sparsely to densely strigillose.
broadly turbinate, 2.5–3(–5) × 2–3.5(–7) mm.
broadly campanulate, 3–6 × 4.5–8 mm.
pistillate 5–20; functionally staminate 12–30;
corollas pale yellow, sparsely hairy or glabrous.
pistillate 6–7;
bisexual 15–26;
corollas mostly yellow, sometimes red-tinged, 1–2 mm, glabrous or glabrate.
(margins scarious) glabrous or villous-tomentose.
(greenish, color often obscured by indument) ovate or lanceolate (margins dark brown), sparsely to densely tomentose.
(pedunculate) in (mostly leafless) paniculiform arrays.
(erect or spreading, some nodding, peduncles 0 or to 30 mm) in racemiform or spiciform arrays 1–6 × 1–2 cm.
oblong-lanceoloid, somewhat compressed, 0.8–1 mm, faintly nerved, glabrous.
oblong (ribbed), 1–1.5 mm, glabrous.
= 18, 36, 72, 90.
Artemisia campestris
Artemisia furcata
Subspecies ca. 7 (3 in the flora).
Artemisia campestris varies; each morphologic form grades into another. The present circumscription is conservative in that only three subspecies are recognized; the subspecies usually can be separated geographically as well as morphologically. Populations in western North America consist primarily of subsp. pacifica; east of the continental divide, plants are assigned to subsp. canadensis in northern latitudes and to subsp. caudata in southern latitudes.
(Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.)
Artemisia furcata extends from the islands of the Bering Sea into southern and interior Alaska, parts of Canada (disjunct in British Columbia and the northernmost Rocky Mountains of Alberta), and on Mt. Rainier in Washington. The array of names applied to A. furcata shows the taxonomic confusion arising from a myriad of morphologic variants that may indicate introgression with other species.
(Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.)
1. Perennials; stems 2–5; basal rosettes persistent | subsp. pacifica |
1. Biennials; stems 1(–3); basal rosettes not persistent (withering before flowering) | → 2 |
2. Involucres globose, 3–4 × 3.5–5 mm; n of 50°, primarily Canada | subsp. canadensis |
2. Involucres turbinate, 2–3 × 2–3 mm; s of 50°, e from Rocky Mountains to coastal North America | subsp. caudata |
- Local floras:
BC, 
OR, 
WA - Local Web sites:
CalFlora, CalPhotos, 
Flora NW, 
Go Botany, 
IL Wildflowers, 
KS Wildflowers, 
MI Flora, 
MN Wildflowers, 
MO Plants, 
PNW Herbaria 
WildflowerSearch
iNaturalist (observations)
USDA Plants Database- LBJ Wildflower Center
- SEINet
- Plants of the World Online
- Encyclopedia of Life
- Wikipedia
- Google Image Search
