170 MISC. PUBLICATION 101, U. S. DEPT. OF AGRICULTURE 
of little value for summer grazing, range experts in certain regions, 
such as southern Wyoming and southern Utah, hold it to be one 
of the chief local forage species, furnishing fairly good to excellent 
browse in fall and winter for all classes of livestock. Nelson (92) 
and Smith (124) regard it as perhaps the best of the forage sage- 
brushes, stating that it produces much more forage in proportion 
to the area occupied than the common sagebrush, “due to the 
production each year of a very large | number of long, slender, tender 
shoots, which are browsed in winter.” 
Estafiata (A. frigida) (fig. 48) is undoubtedly the well-established 
vernacular name of this species in the Southwest, while pasture 
sagebrush is probably the name in most general use for the plant 
toward the North. The Joint Committee on Horticultural Nomen- 
clature (3) recommends the name fringed wormwood. Other 
names used for the species include American wormwood, budsage, 
bud wormwood, (Colorado) mountain sage(brush), and (1/8) sierra 
salvia. 
This species has an enormously wide distribution, ranging from 
Mexico northward through the western United States and western 
Canada, into Alaska, and across to Asia and portions of northern 
Europe. As might be expected from its tremendous range, the 
forage value of this plant varies considerably in different places. 
In general, however, it is regarded as one of the best native species 
of Artemisia and is usually considered a good sheep and cattle feed, 
especially in the fall and winter, though on some ranges it is es- 
teemed as a year-round browse. The abundance and accessibility 
of the species, combined with its well-developed root system (re- 
sistant alike to drought and overgrazing) together with the slender 
stems and wealth of delicate aromatic leaves and tender buds, give 
it high rank in the genus. 
On the whole the forage value of estafiata is deemed greater in 
the southern portions of its range and lessens toward the north 
and east. Probably the greater degree of aridity toward the south 
with the lesser number of succulent plant associates has something 
to do with this, while undoubtedly its longer use in that region on 
fall, winter, and spring range plays an ‘important part. “In the 
Southwest it is especially valued on lambing range, where it some- 
times occupies the foremost rank. 
Kstafiata is one of the important sources of winter feed for elk 
in the Jackson Hole country. Toward the north, however, esta- 
fiata is apt to be looked on more or less as an indicator of over- 
grazing, and in a number of places it is held to be quite worthless. 
For example Sarvis (1/7 ) states that in the northern Great Plains 
about Mandan, N. Dak., “ where this plant occurs in abundance it 
usually will be found that the area has been overstocked for several 
seasons,” and the same author observes that many northern pastures 
have been totally abandoned where range has been depleted but 
where this plant is abundant. Thomas P. MacKenzie, commissioner 
of grazing, department of lands, British Columbia, in correspond- 
ence with the Forest Service, strongly intimates that this species, 
known locally as wormwood, is an indicator of overgrazing in 
British Columbia, cattle apparently relishing it in the fall only 
