Both Artemisia

Artemisia douglasiana vs Artemisia ludoviciana

These two are not on this page because a keyword tool suggested them. They are here because our own identification model genuinely mistook one for the other, on real photographs, 3 times. We publish the rate, and then we tell you what actually separates them.

Confused 3x by our model Same genus Artemisia Method published

Side by sidefigs. a and b

Artemisia douglasiana, photographed by Millie Basden
fig. a Millie Basden, CC BY 4.0

Artemisia douglasiana

California mugwort
Artemisia ludoviciana, photographed by Mary Krieger
fig. b Mary Krieger, CC BY 4.0

Artemisia ludoviciana

Silver Wormwood

How often our model gets it wrong measured, not estimated

When the plant was The model said How often
Artemisia ludoviciana Artemisia douglasiana 3 of 20 (15%)

Measured on 38,299 openly licensed, research-grade photographs. Full method and dataset.

What actually separates themon the record

Family Both Asteraceae. The family does not separate them.
Genus Both Artemisia. Congeners, which is why this is hard.
Flowering Peaks in August versus August. Timing does not separate them. (n = 374 and 217.)

What we do not have yet: the diagnostic morphological character that a botanist would key on, from a source we can cite. We are not going to invent one. Until we have it, this page tells you the two are genuinely confusable, how often, and what the taxonomy and the flowering data do and do not settle.

Both recordsfull pages