Artemisia minor Jacquem. ex Bess.

Perennial, strongly aromatic, silky-villose, densely tufted alpine herb with numerous, ascending, 8-12 cm long stems from horizontally creeping woody rootstock covered with dry broad leaf bases. Leaves silky-villose all over, sessile or with strong 4-5 mm long petiole; lamina flabellate, 4-6 x 6-8 mm,, bipinnatipartite to -sect into narrowly oblanceolatee, 2-3.5 x 1-1.25 mm, ± obtuse segments. Capitula heterogamous, few, usually 6-9, hemispherical, c. 7-8 mm across, subsessile, secund, remote in a simple raceme. Involucre 3-4-seriate, phyllaries sparsely hairy externally, all with broad, dark brownish-scarious margins, outermost narrowly ovate, c. 3 x 1.5 mm, acute; innermost narrowly obovate, c. 3 x 1.25 mm, obtuse. Receptacle flat, long hairy. Florets numerous, all fertile; marginal florets fewer than disc-florets, with c. 1 mm long, 2-dentate corolla; disc-florets with tubular, glandulose, c. 1.75 mm long, 5-toothed corolla. Cypselas c. 0.8 mm long, with lateral corolla scar, brown, glabrous.

Distribution: Pakistan, India, Sikkim and China (Xizang).

Fl. Per.: June-September.

An alpine aromatic species occurring above 4000 msl in Baltistan, Ladakh and Kashmir in gravel-mixed sandy-clay soils on mountain slopes.

A. sieversiana var. tibetica C.B.Clarke, Comp. Ind. 165. 1876.