Description
Sagebrush is a coarse, many-branched, pale-grey shrub with yellow flowers and silvery-grey foliage, which is generally 0.5-3 m tall. A deep taproot 1-4 m 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.
Sagebrush has a strong pungent fragrance (especially when wet) due to the presence of camphor, terpenoids and other volatile oils. The taste is bitter and, together with the odor, serves to discourage browsing by many herbivores. It is an evergreen 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 -- are wedge-shaped, 1–3 cm 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.
Sagebrush 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. The Cahuilla used to gather large quantities of sagebrush seed, and grind it to make flour.
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.
Read more about this topic: Artemisia Tridentata
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