Artemisia norvegica

Artemisia norvegica, the alpine or boreal sagewort, is a perennial subshrub of the Asteraceae growing 20-60 cm tall from a stout caudex and taproot. The species has a circumboreal arctic-alpine distribution, occurring in Scotland, Scandinavia, the Ural Mountains, and across northern North America from Nunavut, the Yukon, and Alaska south through British Columbia, Alberta, and the western United States to California, Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana, with three recognized subspecies. It typically grows on rocky slopes, alpine tundra, and disturbed scree. Erect stems arise from a basal cluster of finely dissected, pinnatifid leaves; cauline leaves become reduced and less divided upward. The inflorescence is a narrow, nodding raceme of relatively few hemispheric flower heads, each with a dark brown to purplish involucre, peripheral female ray florets, and central hermaphroditic disc florets. Achenes are small and dispersed by wind, and the plant may also spread vegetatively by stolons.