PLANTS DECIDUOUS • FALL AND WINTER 



Buds, Twigs Alternate 



Plants Unarmed * Without Catkins 



1. Plants with sagebrush odor, taste; low, rigidly branched shrubs 

 to 2 feet high, losing their (mostly deeply 3- to 5-cleft) leaves by 

 late fall; twigs tan to brownish, finely white-woolly-hairy to almost 

 hairless; older bark stringy-fibrous, dark; buds present except on 

 the dead (but drying-persistent) annual seed-head twigs, small, 

 to }i inch long, topmost bud larger than side buds; bud scales sev- 

 eral, overlapping, hard to see (even under lens) because of dense, 

 white-woolly hairs; leaf scars often edged with torn leaf-base rem- 

 nants, bundle trace 1; shrubs not layering or root-sprouting; poor 

 rocky soils, common locally in scablands, e. Oreg., e. Wash.; typo 

 locality, plains of Snake River. 



stiff sagebrush (Artemisia rigida). 29 



:'/Jk Topmost bud 



Leafy-twig tip 



B 





Annual riowering twig, dy- 

 ing in fall after "seeds" 

 are shed 



I 



Leaves falling in late 

 October 



Leafy-twig tip 



Single bundle trace 



Twig, much enlarged to 

 show buds, bud scales, 

 leaf scars, and bundle 

 traces 



Stiff sagebrush 



l CMOS.' 



29 In spring and summer, stiff sagebrush is often confused with threetip sage- 

 brush (Artemisia tripartita) which is evergreen, as are also low sagebrush (A. arbus- 

 cula), silver sagebrush (A. carta) and big sagebrush (.1. tridentata) . Bud sagebrush 

 (A. spinescens) also sheds its leaves, but it has spiny-tipped twigs. 



125 



