17 



Sphaeromeria arqentea Nuttall 

 Chicken Sage 



A. Description 



1. General description: Commonly called a "sage", this member 

 of the Asteraceae (sunflower family) resembles some species 

 of sagebrush ( Artemisia spp. ) due to its fragrance, three 

 parted leaves, and small heads of flowers. The plants are 

 often somewhat woody near the base, but are only about six 

 inches or less tall. The leaves are mostly basal and the 

 tiny heads of bright yellow tubular flowers are borne on 

 short pedicels in small terminal clusters. An illustration 

 of the species is included in Appendix E. 



2. Technical species description (for Tanacetum nuttallii, a 

 synonym, quoted from Cronquist 1955): 



Aromatic perennial with many slender stems 0.5-2 dm. tall, 

 often slightly woody at base, fibrous-rooted, or with a 

 short, deliquescently branched taproot; herbage closely 

 gray-tomentose; leaves appearing clustered at the base 

 because of the numerous short sterile shoots, mostly cuneate 

 and 3-toothed or -lobed at the apex, sometimes 4- to 5-lobed 

 or entire, up to about 1.5 cm long including the slender 

 base; heads several, mostly short-pedunculate in a 

 subcapitate cluster, small, the involucre only 3-4 mm high, 

 the disk 4-7 mm wide; receptacle glabrous, strongly convex; 

 pappus essentially wanting. 



3. Diagnostic characters: The genus Sphaeromeria is 

 distinguished from lowland species of Artemisia by the 

 arrangement of its flower heads in capitate clusters vs. 

 racemes or panicles. Sphaeromeria arqentea differs from 

 Sphaeromeria capitata (rock tansy) by having leaves which 

 are merely toothed or shallowly lobed rather than deeply 

 lobed and flower heads borne on pedicels in small, somewhat 

 loose clusters rather than sessile in larger dense clusters. 

 Rock tansey, like chicken sage (see below), grows in 

 limestone habitats in Beaverhead County, but the two species 

 have not been seen growing together. 



B. Current legal or other formal status 



1. State: The Montana Natural Heritage Program ranks 

 Sphaeromeria arqentea G? and SI (Heidel 1994). The 

 undetermined global rank reflects a lack of knowledge on the 

 species distribution and abundance in other states. In 

 Montana, it is considered critically imperiled due to 

 extreme rarity. 



