Shrub 2-6 dm tall Numerous erect, slender, brittle branches. Has ray flowers in each head | ||
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General
Description:
This yellow-flowered, bushy plant varies in height from 8 inches to 2 feet.
It is commonly found in dry sites with sage brush below the subalpine zone.
It seems to increase with over use of the range. It can be confused with gray
rabbit-brush, but broom snakeweed has ray flowers and Rabbit-brush does not.
The imbricate involucral bracts are green-tipped. The herbage and linear leaves
are scabrous, punctate, puberulent. The leaves are 2-4 cm long and 1-2 mm wide.
The flowers are in small, flat-topped, sub-cylindric heads. The pappus is of
3-8 scales rather than hairs. Herbalists use the dried, bundled flowering stems
boiled in water to make a tea which is then added to one's bath to ease the
pains of arthritis and muscle aches.
Distribution:
Sask. and Alberta to extreme southeast Washington, eastern Oregon, California,
Mexico and Kansas.
Habitat:
Dry, open places in the lower foothills, valleys, and plains to higher elevations
the farther south in its range
Other:
Flowering stems were bundled dried and used later for tea that was added to
a bath that was reported to ease arthritis and muscle-tendon pain.