DESERT SAGE BRUSH (Artemisia tridentata, Nutt.). Flower 

 heads small, yellowish, all of disk florets, in dense panicles a 

 foot long; leaves silver gray on both sides, about an inch long, 

 wedge-shaped, the broad, square summit 3-toothed or 3-lobed, 

 aromatic. An erect, much-branched shrub 1 to 6 feet tall 

 (sometimes 10 to 12), with a short trunk and shrubby bark; 

 abundant from Lower California to Washington on plains and 

 mountains bordering the desert and eastward to Montana, 

 Colorado, and Utah; blooming in late spring and summer. 



This is the characteristic Sage Brush of the Far West, in 

 places forming the entire vegetal covering of mile after mile. 

 Aside from the use of the short trunks for fuel when timber is 

 unprocurable, white men have small regard for it; but the 

 Indians turned it to account also in a medicinal way. A de- 

 coction of the leaves was used in diarrhea, and the mashed 

 leaves were applied to bruises. A variety (angustifolia) with 

 narrower leaves, the lower with a roundish summit barely 

 3-toothed, occurs from Southern California eastward to New 

 Mexico. 



