Artemisia filifolia

Did You Know?

• The Navajo used sand sagebrush medicinally and for ritual purposes.
• Being quite soft, it was used as toilet paper.
• Sand sagebrush seed is sold commercially for revegetation of rangeland and coalfields.

Description

This branching woody shrub reaches up to 1.5 m tall. Its stems bear narrow, threadlike leaves up to 8 cm long and less than half a millimeter wide, sometimes split into segments and arranged singly or in fascicles. The inflorescence is a panicle of hanging flower heads, each containing sterile disc florets and 2 to 3 fertile ray florets. The fruit is a tiny achene that does not disperse far from the parent plant. Leaf color is grayish-green.

Ecology

Artemisia filifolia dominates much of the west-central United States, especially where the substrate is deep, sandy soil, and serves as an indicator of such soils. It is effective at preventing erosion on sandy substrates. In the Great Plains, it is a key component of prairie, grassland, and shrubland ecosystems alongside grasses like sand bluestem, grama grasses, sand reedgrass, little bluestem, and sand dropseed. Sandsage prairie from Nebraska to central Texas, river systems in eastern Colorado and Kansas, and sandhills in Colorado and southeastern Wyoming are among the regions it dominates. In Texas, it grows with honey mesquite in the Trans-Pecos and with sand shinnery oak elsewhere. The ecosystem is shaped by fire and grazing; historically, natural wildfire and bison grazing maintained it through pyric herbivory.

Ecosystem

Sand sagebrush is a key part of many animal habitats. Prairie dogs dig their towns in sandy sage grassland, and after the prairie dogs leave, burrowing owls take over the empty burrows. Sage grouse live there too, though they favor big sagebrush. Lesser prairie chickens and scaled quail eat the seeds, and the chickens also use the shrub for cover and nesting. Removing large amounts of sand sagebrush lowers the number and variety of breeding birds. This plant can turn into a weed, and people control it by burning it and then letting livestock graze the new sprouts, or by using herbicides or mowing.