Artemisia dracunculus
Artemisia palmeri
dragon herb, dragon sagewort, dragon wormwood, tarragon, wild tarragon
Palmer sagewort, San Diego sagewort
relatively numerous, erect, green to brown or reddish brown, somewhat woody, glabrous.
usually 1–15, erect, brown, simple (wandlike, brittle, bases woody), glabrous.
proximal blades bright green and glabrous or gray-green and sparsely hairy, 5–8 cm;
cauline blades bright green (gray-green in desert forms), linear, lanceolate, or oblong, 1–7 × 0.1–0.5(–0.9) cm, mostly entire, sometimes irregularly lobed, acute, usually glabrous, sometimes glabrescent (deserts).
cauline (petiolate), bicolor (gray-green and dark green);
blades broadly lanceolate, 3.5–12(–15) × 0.2–10 cm, relatively deeply and coarsely pinnately lobed (lobes 3–7+), faces canescent (abaxial) or glabrous or sparsely hairy (adaxial).
globose, 2–3 × 2–3.5(–6) mm.
globose, 2.5–3.5 × 2–5 mm.
pistillate 6–25; functionally staminate 8–20;
corollas pale yellow, 1.8–2 mm, eglandular or sparsely glandular.
pistillate 0;
bisexual 8–30;
corollas pale yellow, 1.5–2.2 mm, resinous-glandular (style branches exsert, truncate, erose).
(light brown, broadly lanceolate, membranous): margins broadly hyaline, glabrous.
(pale green to stramineous) broadly ovate, glabrous or sparsely hairy (receptacles paleate).
in terminal or lateral, leafy, paniculiform arrays 15–45 × 6–30 cm; appearing ball-like on slender, sometimes nodding peduncles.
(erect or nodding, peduncles relatively slender) in open, paniculiform arrays, 15–40 × 3–10 cm (widely branched).
oblong, 0.5–0.8 mm, faintly nerved, glabrous.
(light brown, shiny) ellipsoid, 1–1.2 mm, (4-angled), glabrous or glandular.
= 18.
= 18.
Artemisia dracunculus
Artemisia palmeri
Artemisia dracunculus is widely cultivated as a culinary herb and may be introduced in parts of its range. It is easily cultivated from rootstocks, and while establishment from seeds is rare, seedlings can be found with amenable environmental conditions. Because of its popularity as an herb, it may suffer from overcollecting. Its scarcity in Missouri, Iowa, and Illinois (J. T. Kartesz and C. A. Meacham 1999) may have been caused by overly enthusiastic collecting as well as habitat loss.
(Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.)
Of conservation concern.
Artemisia palmeri is known only from drainages near the coast, from northeast of San Diego to just south of Ensenada. Most of its habitat has been destroyed by urban development. It is of particular interest because of its paleate receptacles, an anomalous trait that confounds our understanding of its evolutionary relationship to other species of Artemisia.
(Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.)
- Local floras:
BC, 
CA, 
OR, 
WA - Local Web sites: CalFlora, CalPhotos,
Flora NW, 
IL Wildflowers, 
KS Wildflowers, 
MN Wildflowers, 
MO Plants, 
PNW Herbaria, 
SW CO Wildflowers, Turner Photog. 
WildflowerSearch
iNaturalist (observations)
USDA Plants Database- LBJ Wildflower Center
- SEINet
- Plants of the World Online
- Encyclopedia of Life
- Wikipedia
- Google Image Search
