Taxonomic Background Artemisia cana (Pursh) is a perennial shrub belonging to the Asteraceae family (sunflower family). While often treated as a single species, botanists frequently recognize several subspecies (e.g., ssp. cana , ssp. bolanderi , ssp. viscidula ) that vary slightly in habitat preference and leaf hairiness. Its specific epithet, cana , is Latin for "gray or hoary," a direct reference to its most defining visual trait.
Unlike its close relative, the basin big sagebrush ( Artemisia tridentata ), A. cana lacks the three-toothed (tridentate) leaf tip. Instead, it features narrow, linear to lanceolate leaves that are entire or occasionally have one or two small lobes near the base. The leaves are covered in dense, fine, silvery-white trichomes (hairs), giving the entire plant a lustrous, gray-silver sheen. It typically grows as a rounded, bushy shrub reaching heights of 0.5 to 2 meters (1.5 to 6.5 feet). In late summer to autumn, it produces numerous small, yellowish-green nodding flower heads arranged in narrow, leafy panicles. artemisia cana