Lobes thin and threadlike. Leaves are sometimes simple and fascicled (bunched) toward the top of the stems but more commonly pinnately dissected beginning at the midpoint into 3-5 lobes, especially lower down. This species blurs the distinction between pinnately and palmately divided (the Jepson Manual describes it as pinnate, the Munz flora as palmate). The lobes look as though they're palmately divided, but the common point of branching is actually halfway up the midrib and there may be another such common point for further lobing higher up on the central or even the lateral lobes. Margins curl under, enhancing the threadlike thinness of the leaves and lobes. The leaves are 1-10 cm long (usually <5 cm), the leaves and lobes <1 mm wide. They are abundant, pubescent (hairy/downy), silvery to light green depending on how hairy, intensely and pleasantly sage-aromatic. Stems are numerous, both erect and spreading in habit, with short ascending lateral branchlets, and each year's new growth comes up directly from the base or near it. When present, the inflorescences are narrow and leafy panicles (compound branched flower clusters), with tiny composite flowerheads (< 5 mm diameter) globular in shape and having only disk flowers (no ray flowers like a daisy). These are dull yellowish or sometimes even reddish in color when blooming from August to December (it has been known to start a secondary flowering season in March during a really rainy year). The fruit is a beige achene (dry, 1-seeded fruit) cylindric or conic in shape, with a pappus of brownish bristles (modified sepals) that promote wind dispersal. The plant itself is a shrub typically about 0.5-1.5 m tall. Favors California sage scrub, the coastal strand, and openings in chaparral under under 800 m in the Coast, Transverse, and Peninsular ranges from the Bay Area to northern Baja, including the Channel Islands.
Artemisia californica aka Crossostephium insulare (Asteraceae aka Compositae): California sagebrush or coastal sagebrush
The development of this key was partially funded through the Geoscience Diversity Enhancement Program (Award #0703798) and through a course of re-assigned time provided by the CSULB Scholarly and Creative Activities Committee. Thanks also to the students in sections of biogeography, introductory physical geography, GDEP, and LSAMP for "test-driving" various editions of this key.