LESSER PASTURE SAGE BRUSH; WORMWOOD 



SAGE 



Artemisia frigida Willd. 

 THISTLE FAMILY' 



In Western Canada grow many species of Artemisia, kuo\ 

 variously as wormwoods, sage brushes, or mugworts. Most 

 them are dry ground plants, a few are found in moist valleys, 

 and one at least (A . biennis) has become in many places a common 

 and unsightly weed. Certain kinds, especially the European 

 wormwood (^4. Absinthium) grown in many gardens and escaped 

 from them to the roadside, are so widely used as domestic medicine 

 that "wormwood tea is an odorous memory with every persoi 

 who was reared in the country."* 



Those species of Artemisia commonly called sage brushes 

 are characteristic of arid regions, where over large tracts they 

 sometimes constitute almost the entire vegetation. We have all 

 heard of, even if we have not seen, the sage brush desert whose 

 gray monotony impresses travellers as they cross the continent 

 by southern railway lines. Such universal grayness of tone is 

 due to the fact that stems, leaves, and flower-heads of these plants 

 are all densely coated with white hair or wool. The protection 

 thus afforded is two-fold: first, transpiration is greatly diminished; 

 and, second, the chlorophyll the green coloring matter of plants 

 in the tissue beneath the hairs is shaded as by an awning from 

 the destructive action of too intense sunshine. 



The Lesser Pasture Sage Brush pictured on the opposite page 

 is one of the smaller of these desert sages. It has, however, a 

 range extending far beyond the desert, being found northward as 

 far as Hudson's Bay and Alaska. Over much of this great 

 expanse it occurs sparingly in small colonies on particularly dry 

 banks or hillsides, but in the arid part of the Canadian plains it 

 sometimes covers the ground over considerable areas. 



Considered, not as a hundred or a thousand acre carpet, 

 but individually in detail, it is a pretty plant with soft masses of 

 finely-cut, silvery foliage above which in late Summer rise silvery 

 plumes eight to twenty inches high. Along the slender branches 

 of these stems are strung round and nodding flower-heads, pearly 

 gray on the outside, but soon opening to emit the tiny yellow 

 florets. 



'Liberty Hyde Bailey. 



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