Thank you for buying a native plant from Windflower Native Plant Nursery. Your purchase helps create a bit of Montana natural  history in your own yard as well as restore a piece of native Montana. This plant was grown by seed I collected locally in an ethical manner.    

Fringed Sage or Prairie Sagewort
Artemisia frigida
Sunflower or Composite Family

Plant color: soft, feathery, silvery grey leaves with stems that contain several dozen tiny yellow flower heads. The beauty of this plant is its foliage.
Plant height: 10-40 cm
Bloom time: mid to late summer
Native habitat: Dry, open sites, plains to subalpine, Alaska to Mexico

This plant works well with native grasses and penstemons. It is a beautiful background or foreground for more colorful blooming plants. The sweet “sage-y” smell of this plant makes it a favorite.  It prefers dry, sunny locations and within three years it can withstand short-term drought fairly well. When the plant is newly planted you may prune it lightly to keep from drying out.

All the sages have been used for centuries for a large variety of flavorings condiments, and medicines. Fringed sage was used by the Hopi Indians for flavoring their sweet-corn. The Cheyenne and Crow called this “women’s sage” since the leaf tea was taken to correct menstrual irregularity. Burning this plant is said to drive mosquitoes away. Placed in bedding it will repel bedbugs, lice and fleas. The Okanagan used it to repel flies from their salmon.

The sages are members of the sunflower family (Asteraceae) which contains over 15,000 species. In this family many flowers are grouped into single heads often erroneously called flowers. Aster means "star" in Greek and refers to the radiate arrangement of the flowers in the heads.

The scientific name Artemisia comes from an ancient sag plant in Asia Minor. After King Mausolus’s wife, Queen Artemisia of Caria, died he named the plant in her honor (ok I don’t really know who these people were either).   Frigida (Latin) means "of cold regions or habitats

Fringed sage was first described for science in 1804 by German botanist and Director of the Berlin Botanical Garden, Carl Ludwig von Willdenow (1765-1812).

 

Windflower Native Plant Nursery
PO Box 306
West Glacier, MT 59936
1.406.387.5527
www.windflowernativeplants.com