''Artemisia tridentata'', commonly called big sagebrush,MacKay, Pam (2013), ''Mojave Desert Wildflowers'', 2nd ed., , p. 264. Great Basin sagebrush or (locally) simply sagebrush, is an aromatic shrub from the family

Asteraceae The family Asteraceae, alternatively Compositae, consists of over 32,000 known species of flowering plants in over 1,900 genera within the order Asterales. Commonly referred to as the aster, daisy, composite, or sunflower family, Compositae ...

, which grows in arid and semi-arid conditions, throughout a range of cold desert,

steppe In physical geography, a steppe () is an ecoregion characterized by grassland plains without trees apart from those near rivers and lakes. Steppe biomes may include: * the montane grasslands and shrublands biome * the temperate grasslan ...

, and

mountain A mountain is an elevated portion of the Earth's crust, generally with steep sides that show significant exposed bedrock. Although definitions vary, a mountain may differ from a plateau in having a limited summit area, and is usually higher t ...

habitats in the

Intermountain West The Intermountain West, or Intermountain Region, is a geographic and geological region of the Western United States. It is located between the front ranges of the Rocky Mountains on the east and the Cascade Range and Sierra Nevada on the we ...

of North America. The vernacular name "sagebrush" is also used for several related members of the genus '' Artemisia'', such as California sagebrush (''Artemisia californica''). Big sagebrush and other ''Artemisia'' shrubs are the dominant plant species across large portions of the Great Basin. The range extends northward through

British Columbia British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include ...

's southern interior, south into

Baja California Baja California (; 'Lower California'), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Baja California ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Baja California), is a state in Mexico. It is the northernmost and westernmost of the 32 federal entities of Mex ...

, and east into the western Great Plains of

New Mexico ) , population_demonym = New Mexican ( es, Neomexicano, Neomejicano, Nuevo Mexicano) , seat = Santa Fe, New Mexico, Santa Fe , LargestCity = Albuquerque, New Mexico, Albuquerque , LargestMetro = Albuquerque metropolitan area, Tiguex , Offi ...

Colorado Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the wes ...

Nebraska Nebraska () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by South Dakota to the north; Iowa to the east and Missouri to the southeast, both across the Missouri River; Kansas to the south; Colorado to the so ...

, and the Dakotas. Several major threats exist to sagebrush ecosystems, including human settlements, conversion to

agricultural Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled peopl ...

land,

livestock Livestock are the domesticated animals raised in an agricultural setting to provide labor and produce diversified products for consumption such as meat, eggs, milk, fur, leather, and wool. The term is sometimes used to refer solely to anima ...

grazing In agriculture, grazing is a method of animal husbandry whereby domestic livestock are allowed outdoors to roam around and consume wild vegetations in order to convert the otherwise indigestible (by human gut) cellulose within grass and other ...

, invasive plant species, and

wildfire A wildfire, forest fire, bushfire, wildland fire or rural fire is an unplanned, uncontrolled and unpredictable fire in an area of combustible vegetation. Depending on the type of vegetation present, a wildfire may be more specifically identi ...

s. Sagebrush provides food and

habitat In ecology, the term habitat summarises the array of resources, physical and biotic factors that are present in an area, such as to support the survival and reproduction of a particular species. A species habitat can be seen as the physical ...

for a variety of species, such as

sage grouse Sage-grouse are grouse belonging to the bird genus ''Centrocercus.'' The genus includes two species: the Gunnison grouse (''Centrocercus minimus'') and the greater sage-grouse (''Centrocercus urophasianus''). These birds are distributed throug ...

, pronghorn antelope, grey vireo,

pygmy rabbit The pygmy rabbit (''Brachylagus idahoensis'') is a rabbit species native to the United States. It is also the only native rabbit species in North America to dig its own burrow. The pygmy rabbit differs significantly from species within either th ...

, and

mule deer The mule deer (''Odocoileus hemionus'') is a deer indigenous to western North America; it is named for its ears, which are large like those of the mule. Two subspecies of mule deer are grouped into the black-tailed deer. Unlike the related whit ...

. It is especially important to game animals during the winter. Native Americans used the plant medicinally. It is also useful as firewood.

Description

Big sagebrush is a coarse, many-branched, pale-grey shrub with yellow

flower A flower, sometimes known as a bloom or blossom, is the reproductive structure found in flowering plants (plants of the division Angiospermae). The biological function of a flower is to facilitate reproduction, usually by providing a mechanism ...

s and silvery-grey

foliage A leaf ( : leaves) is any of the principal appendages of a vascular plant stem, usually borne laterally aboveground and specialized for photosynthesis. Leaves are collectively called foliage, as in "autumn foliage", while the leaves, ste ...

, which is generally tall. A deep

taproot A taproot is a large, central, and dominant root from which other roots sprout laterally. Typically a taproot is somewhat straight and very thick, is tapering in shape, and grows directly downward. In some plants, such as the carrot, the taproo ...

in length, coupled with laterally spreading roots near the surface, allows sagebrush to gather water from both surface precipitation and the water table several meters beneath. Big sagebrush that is over a meter tall is an indicator of arable land, because it prefers deep, basic soils. Sagebrush is generally long-lived once it makes it past the seedling stage, and can reach ages of over 100 years. Artemisia tridentata 2

The species has a strong pungent fragrance (especially when wet) due to the presence of

camphor Camphor () is a waxy, colorless solid with a strong aroma. It is classified as a terpenoid and a cyclic ketone. It is found in the wood of the camphor laurel ('' Cinnamomum camphora''), a large evergreen tree found in East Asia; and in the k ...

terpenoid The terpenoids, also known as isoprenoids, are a class of naturally occurring organic chemicals derived from the 5-carbon compound isoprene and its derivatives called terpenes, diterpenes, etc. While sometimes used interchangeably with "terpenes ...

s and other

volatile oils An essential oil is a concentrated hydrophobic liquid containing Volatility (chemistry), volatile (easily evaporated at normal temperatures) chemical compounds from plants. Essential oils are also known as volatile oils, ethereal oils, aetherol ...

. The taste is bitter and, together with the odor, serves to discourage browsing by many herbivores. It is an

evergreen In botany, an evergreen is a plant which has foliage that remains green and functional through more than one growing season. This also pertains to plants that retain their foliage only in warm climates, and contrasts with deciduous plants, which ...

shrub, keeping some of its leaves year-round (although it loses many of them in the late summer). The leaves—attached to the branches at the

axillary nodes The axillary lymph nodes or armpit lymph nodes are lymph nodes in the human armpit. Between 20 and 49 in number, they drain lymph vessels from the lateral quadrants of the breast, the superficial lymph vessels from thin walls of the chest and th ...

—are wedge-shaped, long and 0.3–1 cm broad, with the wider outer tips divided into three lobes (hence the scientific name ''tridentata''). The leaves are covered with fine silvery hairs. The plant flowers in the late summer or early fall. The small yellow flowers are in long, loosely arranged tubular clusters. The fruits are seed-like and have a small amount of hairs on the surface. Big sagebrush can also reproduce through sprouts, which shoot up from the underground rhizome. The sprouts are an extension of the parental plant while seedlings are completely individualistic to any other plant. Among these two strategies, the seedlings need more moisture for germination and early survival. This is due to the sprouts being connected to already healthy and associated plants while the new seedlings will start anew.

Chemistry

Sagebrush essential oil contains approximately 40% ''l''-camphor; 20%

pinene Pinene is a collection of unsaturated bicyclic monoterpenes. Two geometric isomers of pinene are found in nature, α-pinene and β-pinene. Both are chiral. As the name suggests, pinenes are found in pines. Specifically, pinene is the major co ...

; 7% cineole; 5% methacrolein; and 12% ''a''-terpinene, ''d''-camphor, and

sesqiterpenoids Sesquiterpenes are a class of terpenes that consist of three isoprene units and often have the molecular formula C15H24. Like monoterpenes, sesquiterpenes may be cyclic or contain rings, including many unique combinations. Biochemical modificat ...

Taxonomy

Much discussion and disagreement revolves around the question of how to divide the species into varieties and subgenera. The following subspecies are accepted by some authors, though others advocate different systems. * ''A. tridentata'' subsp. ''tridentata'' ("basin big sagebrush") * ''A. tridentata'' subsp. ''vaseyana'' ("mountain big sagebrush") * ''A. tridentata'' subsp. ''wyomingensis'' ("Wyoming big sagebrush") – Found in the drier portions of the sagebrush steppe. Shrub density is generally less than 1 plant/m², with little herbaceous cover surrounding the shrub. * ''A. tridentata'' subsp. ''xericensis'' ("scabland big sagebrush") * ''A. tridentata'' subsp. ''spiciformis'' ("subalpine big sagebrush") * ''A. tridentata'' subsp. ''parishii'' ("Parish's big sagebrush")

Ecology

''Artemisia tridentata'' grows in arid and semi-arid conditions, throughout the

of North America. Sagebrush is not a desert plant, but rather a resident of the

, in areas that receive of annual precipitation. Big sagebrush and other ''Artemisia'' species are the dominant plants across large portions of the Great Basin, covering some in 11 western U.S. states and Canadian provinces. Sagebrush provides food and

for a variety of animal species, such as

, pronghorn,

gray vireo The gray vireo (''Vireo vicinior'') is a small North American passerine bird. It breeds from the southwestern United States and northern Baja California to western Texas. It is a migrant, wintering in northwestern Mexico, in western Sonora state ...

, and

. Sagebrush also creates habitat for many species of

grass Poaceae () or Gramineae () is a large and nearly ubiquitous family of monocotyledonous flowering plants commonly known as grasses. It includes the cereal grasses, bamboos and the grasses of natural grassland and species cultivated in law ...

es and

herb In general use, herbs are a widely distributed and widespread group of plants, excluding vegetables and other plants consumed for macronutrients, with savory or aromatic properties that are used for flavoring and garnishing food, for medicina ...

s. Besides providing shade and shelter from the wind, the long taproot of sagebrush draws water up from deep in the soil, some of which becomes available to these surrounding

shallow-rooted In vascular plants, the roots are the organs of a plant that are modified to provide anchorage for the plant and take in water and nutrients into the plant body, which allows plants to grow taller and faster. They are most often below the sur ...

plants.

The terpenoid compounds in big sagebrush are thought to ward off herbivores. These oils, at high concentrations, are toxic to the symbiotic

bacteria Bacteria (; singular: bacterium) are ubiquitous, mostly free-living organisms often consisting of one biological cell. They constitute a large domain of prokaryotic microorganisms. Typically a few micrometres in length, bacteria were am ...

in the

rumen The rumen, also known as a paunch, is the largest stomach compartment in ruminants and the larger part of the reticulorumen, which is the first chamber in the alimentary canal of ruminant animals. The rumen's microbial favoring environment allow ...

of some

ruminant Ruminants ( suborder Ruminantia) are hoofed herbivorous grazing or browsing mammals that are able to acquire nutrients from plant-based food by fermenting it in a specialized stomach prior to digestion, principally through microbial actions. Th ...

s like deer and cattle. Pronghorn are the only large

herbivore A herbivore is an animal anatomically and physiologically adapted to eating plant material, for example foliage or marine algae, for the main component of its diet. As a result of their plant diet, herbivorous animals typically have mouthp ...

to browse sagebrush extensively. Damage to sagebrush plants caused by grazing herbivores results in the release of volatile chemicals, which are used to signal a warning to nearby plants, so that they can increase the production of repellent chemical compounds. This plant-to-plant communication can take place at distances of up to 60 cm. Antilocapra americana

Several major threats exist to sage brush ecosystems, including human settlements, conversion to

land,

, invasive plant species,

s, and

climate change In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to ...

. The cattle industry burns large areas of sagebrush habitat to make way for grazing animals. Due to large periods of time where sagebrush was the primary shrub, many species have become adapted to this habitat. The burning of the shrubs leads to habitat loss of many species and can be very detrimental to the ecosystem as a whole. Furthermore, the destruction of native grasses and forbs by grazing and fire creates conditions where invasive plants colonize the area. The invasive species which has destroyed the largest amount of sagebrush habitat is cheatgrass (''Bromus tectorum''). Since its accidental introduction in the 1890s, cheatgrass has radically altered the native shrub ecosystem by replacing indigenous vegetation, and by creating a fire cycle that is too frequent to allow sagebrush to re-establish itself. Sagebrush is not fire-tolerant and relies on wind-blown seeds from outside the burned area for re-establishment. Some tree species have also been encroaching on big sagebrush habitat. For example, in the Warner Mountains in California white fir (''Abies concolor'') has been out-competing big sagebrush.

Toxicity

The plant's oils are

toxic Toxicity is the degree to which a chemical substance or a particular mixture of substances can damage an organism. Toxicity can refer to the effect on a whole organism, such as an animal, bacterium, or plant, as well as the effect on a subs ...

to the

liver The liver is a major organ only found in vertebrates which performs many essential biological functions such as detoxification of the organism, and the synthesis of proteins and biochemicals necessary for digestion and growth. In humans, it ...

and digestive system of humans if taken internally, so care must be taken during any form of internal use. Generally, toxic symptoms will subside 24–48 hours after ingesting the plant.

Uses

The

Cahuilla The Cahuilla , also known as ʔívil̃uqaletem or Ivilyuqaletem, are a Native American people of the various tribes of the Cahuilla Nation, living in the inland areas of southern California. The main modern use is as firewood, with the wood's oils being particularly flammable.

Medicinal

The plant's active medicinal constituents include camphor, terpenoids, and

tannin Tannins (or tannoids) are a class of astringent, polyphenolic biomolecules that bind to and precipitate proteins and various other organic compounds including amino acids and alkaloids. The term ''tannin'' (from Anglo-Norman ''tanner ...

s. It is used as an herbal medicine by Native Americans throughout the

of North America, most notably as a smudging herb. It is also used for preventing infection in wounds, stopping internal bleeding, and treating

headache Headache is the symptom of pain in the face, head, or neck. It can occur as a migraine, tension-type headache, or cluster headache. There is an increased risk of depression in those with severe headaches. Headaches can occur as a resul ...

s and colds. The

Navajo The Navajo (; British English: Navaho; nv, Diné or ') are a Native Americans in the United States, Native American people of the Southwestern United States. With more than 399,494 enrolled tribal members , the Navajo Nation is the largest fe ...

use the vapors of sagebrush as a treatment for headache.''Edible and Medicinal Plants of the West'', Gregory L. Tilford, The

Okanagan The Okanagan ( ), also known as the Okanagan Valley and sometimes as the Okanagan Country, is a region in the Canadian province of British Columbia defined by the basin of Okanagan Lake and the Canadian portion of the Okanagan River. It is pa ...

and

Colville Colville may refer to: Places Canada * Colville Lake (Northwest Territories), a lake in Northwest Territories * Colville Lake, Northwest Territories, a settlement corporation *Colville Range, a small mountain range in southwestern British Colu ...

people used sagebrush to smoke hides. Among the

Zuni people The Zuni ( zun, A:shiwi; formerly spelled ''Zuñi'') are Native American Pueblo peoples native to the Zuni River valley. The Zuni are a Federally recognized tribe and most live in the Pueblo of Zuni on the Zuni River, a tributary of the Littl ...

, an infusion of the leaves is used externally for body aches. The infusion is also taken as a cold medicine. It is also placed in shoes to treat

athlete's foot Athlete's foot, known medically as ''tinea pedis'', is a common skin infection of the feet caused by a fungus. Signs and symptoms often include itching, scaling, cracking and redness. In rare cases the skin may blister. Athlete's foot fungus ...

, fissures between toes, and as a foot deodorant.Camazine, Scott and Robert A. Bye 1980 A Study Of The Medical Ethnobotany Of The Zuni Indians of New Mexico" ''Journal of Ethnopharmacology'' 2:365–88 (p. 374)

Culture

''A. tridentata'' is the state flower of

Nevada Nevada ( ; ) is a state in the Western region of the United States. It is bordered by Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. Nevada is the 7th-most extensive, ...

References

External links

* * *
GIS Database for Sage Grouse and Shrubsteppe Management in the Intermountain West

Jepson eFlora (TJM2) treatment of ''Artemisia tridentata''

The Sagebrush Sea
{{Taxonbar, from=Q2117903 tridentata Flora of the Northwestern United States Flora of the North-Central United States Flora of the Southwestern United States Flora of Western Canada Flora of the California desert regions Flora of the Great Basin Flora of New Mexico Flora of the Sierra Nevada (United States) Natural history of the California chaparral and woodlands Plants described in 1841 Plants used in traditional Native American medicine Forages Flora without expected TNC conservation status

Description

Chemistry

Taxonomy

Ecology

Toxicity

Uses

Medicinal

Culture

See also

References

External links