444 EXrLOEATlONS ACROSS THE GREAT BASIN OF UTAH 



COMPOSITyE. 



t 



Tlic name of ^^WUd Sii(je^\ now so familiar to every traveller in our western mount- 

 deserts, was first used by Lewis and Clarke, in the naiTativc of their adventurous 

 edition, to designate several species of Artemisia or Wormwood, distantly resembling 

 true garden sage, Salvia officinalis, by their gray foliage and aromatic odor. It seems 



> 



that now this name has, by common use, been restricted to the larger shrubby specie 

 which give a pecuhar character to the arid plateaus of Western Kbrth iimerica, and which 

 are of the highest importance to the traveller as "furnishing the sole article of fuel or shel- 

 ter which they meet in wandering over these woodless deserts", as already Nuttall informs 

 ns in his genera of North American Plants, 2, p. 1-42. He states that the "Wild Sage" is 

 his Artemisia ColumUensis, which name was by him improperly substituted for the pi-ior 

 name of A. cam, desciibed by Pursh from the original specimens of Lewis and Clarke. 

 Ton-ey and Gray, in their Flora of N. America, 2, p. 41(S, doubt whether this really is 

 the "Wild Sage" of those travelers, and come to the conclusion that that name was 

 indiscriminately applied to several shrubby species ; they further state that the plant 

 given by Governor Lewis to Pursh as "the Sas-e" is the herbaceous A. Ludoviciana 



found on the homeward voyage on the Missouri River. 



I have now the means, through information obtained from Mr. H. Engelmann and 

 from Dr. F. V. Hayden, to throw a little more light on this questioii, which is not 



miportance for botanical geography. The 



tVRTEMISIA CANA, PursK Fl 



FI. K 



418.— Shrubby, with woody stem 2-4 inches in diameter, 2-4 feet (on the Yellowstone, 

 Dr. Hayden) or 2-6 feet high (on the Laramie Plains, H. Engelmanti). Stem covered 

 with a light-gray bark, which is separated into many layers of loose shi-eds connected 

 by smaller transverse fibers, and is readily torn off. Wood light, porous, pale-colored, 

 with very many darker brown medullary rays, easily separating along tlie division of the 

 annual rings. These rings, or layers, are from J-1 line in thickness, as stems of 1 ^-2 

 inches diameter show about a dozen rings, and are consequently as many years old. The 

 stems are rarely cyhndrical, but mostly compressed, knotty, and variously twisted, and 

 often stunted; they are sometimes divided from the base, but oftener bear short and thick 

 1 tranches higher up. The annual branchlets are crowded along the older branches, 

 8-12 inches long, densely coated with a soft, white pubescence, and crowded with 

 silvciy-gray leaves, and bear towai-d their upper part and on the numerous short and 

 erect lateral branchlets a profusion of small flower-heads, forming a spiked or con- 

 ti-acted panicle, interspersed with short leaves. The leaves are flat, linear-lanceolate, 

 entn-e or. (the lower ones) rarely lobed, 1-2 or 2 J lines wide and U-2 inches loner' 



becomin 



hemispherical, about 2 lines long and wide 



The flower-heads are mostly sessile, or nearly 



of involucrum shorter, foHa 



d canescent (sometimes the lowest ones larger than the flowers, and pointed) 



iimev scales neariy as long as flowers, brownish, scarious, obtuse, cottony-fimb..... 



on the margins. The flowers are all perfect, usually 5, in some specimens as many as 



8 m number, l^ Hnes long; ovary glandular, and, when bruised, with the odor of 

 woruiwood. 



