Big sagebrush
The silver-leaved, sharp-smelling evergreen shrub of the high desert West, and the main food of the greater sage-grouse nearly all year.
Big sagebrush at a glance
Artemisia tridentata SAYJ-brush; Artemisia tridentata is ar-teh-MEE-zhuh try-den-TAY-tuh
- Type
- Plant · shrub
- Diet
- Producer
- Size
- Ranges from about knee-high (2 feet) to taller than a grown-up standing on a chair (13 feet) for the biggest kind, basin big sagebrush.
- Conservation
- Not federally listed. USFWS notes that sagebrush leaves "dominate" the greater sage-grouse's diet through most of the year.
Eats sunlight, water, soil nutrients
It photosynthesizes year-round through small, silvery leaves. Unlike most shrubs, it never drops them for winter — it's evergreen.
Is it safe to touch?
Harmless to touch. Crush a leaf and smell your fingers — that sharp, herbal smell is the smell of the sagebrush steppe. It isn't people food: bitter and oily, and it's the wildlife's winter pantry, not ours.
Crush one silvery leaf between your fingers, and the smell that comes off on your skin is the whole high desert West in one breath — sharp, herbal, a little like turpentine and sage tea at once. It is also, to a greater sage-grouse, dinner. USFWS says sagebrush leaves dominate that bird’s diet through most of the year, evergreen leaves it can eat in January as easily as July, when almost nothing else out on the steppe is green at all.
Except a sage-grouse doesn’t start out able to eat it. A chick that hatches this spring cannot digest sagebrush yet. For its first three weeks it lives on forbs and insects instead, picking through the grass a few feet from an adult that is eating the one plant it will depend on for the rest of its life. Something in a young grouse’s gut has to catch up to what its parents already run on.
Not every sagebrush looks the same, either. Fossil Butte National Monument alone holds eight different kinds — different subspecies suited to different soil and elevation, all silver-leaved, all evergreen, all putting out that same sharp smell when the wind or a hiker’s hand disturbs a branch. Walk through a stand of it in winter and you’re walking through the only green for miles, and through a sage-grouse’s whole grocery list at once.
Did you know?
- Fossil Butte National Monument alone has eight different kinds of sagebrush growing within its boundary.
- Sagebrush leaves make up most of a greater sage-grouse's diet through the year.
- A sage-grouse chick can't eat sagebrush for its first three weeks of life — it lives on forbs and insects instead, until it can.
Common questions
Does big sagebrush lose its leaves in winter?
No. It's evergreen, keeping its small, silvery leaves all year, which is part of why it matters so much as winter wildlife food.
What does sagebrush smell like?
A sharp, herbal smell that comes out strongest when you crush a leaf between your fingers — one of the signature smells of the high desert West.
What eats sagebrush?
Greater sage-grouse most of all. USFWS says sagebrush leaves dominate their diet through most of the year.
Can a baby sage-grouse eat sagebrush right away?
No. A newly hatched chick can't digest sagebrush for its first three weeks, and eats forbs and insects instead.
How many kinds of sagebrush are there?
A lot — NPS counts eight different sagebrush species and varieties at Fossil Butte National Monument alone.