Artemisia campestris
Artemisia rigida
beach wormwood, field sagewort, field wormwood, northern wormwood, Pacific sagewort, sand wormwood
scabland sagebrush, stiff sagebrush
usually 1–5, turning reddish brown, (often ribbed) tomentose or glabrous.
gray (coarse, brittle), hairy (bark gray, exfoliating).
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.
deciduous, silver-gray (rigid);
blades broadly spatulate, 1.5–4 × 0.5–0.7 cm (bases narrow), 3-lobed (lobes 1/2+ blade lengths, ca. 1 mm wide), faces densely hairy.
broadly turbinate, 2.5–3(–5) × 2–3.5(–7) mm.
narrowly campanulate, 4–5 × 2.5–3.5 mm.
pistillate 5–20; functionally staminate 12–30;
corollas pale yellow, sparsely hairy or glabrous.
4–8;
corollas yellowish red to red, 2–2.8 mm (style branches oblong, truncate, exsert).
(margins scarious) glabrous or villous-tomentose.
elliptic (acute to obtuse), densely canescent.
(pedunculate) in (mostly leafless) paniculiform arrays.
borne singly or (in glomerules) in (densely leafy) spiciform or paniculiform arrays 2–20 × 2 cm.
oblong-lanceoloid, somewhat compressed, 0.8–1 mm, faintly nerved, glabrous.
(4–5-ribbed) 1–1.5 mm, glabrous.
= 18, 36.
Artemisia campestris
Artemisia rigida
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 rigida is an important successional species following fires because the plants form new shoots from the underground caudices. This characteristic aligns the species with other ‘sprouters’ in the subgenus, namely A. cana, A. tripartita, and A. arbuscula.
(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
