Antelope Bitterbrush

This bush, or something very close to it , grows here. In some cultivated areas it has been preserved and makes a very rugged, twisted bo...Read Morensai-like bush/small tree, something like mountain-mahagony. I think this is the spieces because the leaf-tips do have three teeth. However, we do have big-sage (artemesia tridentata) growing along side in places and the flower heads look very similar, as do the leaves, so I might be mistaken as to which is which. Most people around here make no distinction between "rabbit brush" and "sage brush". They both have silver-grey leaves and not all sage has the "tridentata", so the leaves look very similar. However, "rabbit brush" has bright-yellow tufts of flowers that float on top of the bush. Both "big-sage and "bitter-brush" flower in compact heads on the ends of the branches, and the flowers themselves are barely visable. Most of what my neighbor and I thought was sage turned out to be "rabbit-brush" because of the profusion of bright-yellow flowers on every bush around our houses this fall, ( we really never bothered to notice this until this fall. We just assumed it was all "sage-brush.) Anyway, the mature plants I have seen of both bitterbrush and big-sage look very similar and have a twisted bonsai-look of old-age that I think could work very well in a landscaped garden with a xeroscape theme.