Chamaebatiaria millefolium
Common name: 
Fernbush
Desert Sweet
Pronunciation: 
kam-ay-bay-tee-AY-ree-uh mill-ee-FOH-lee-um
Family: 
Rosaceae
Genus: 
Chamaebatiaria
Type: 
Broadleaf
Native to (or naturalized in) Oregon: 
Yes
  • Deciduous shrub in colder areas but evergreen in warmer, generally multistemmed, upright, about 3-7 ft (~0.9-2 m) tall, rounded form, and sweetly aromatic.  Leaves alternate, small, 2-8 cm long, compound (bipinnately), individual leaflets very small, giving the leaf a fern-like appearance (hence the common name), with lobed or wavy margins light green above, pale-pubescent below, sticky.  Flowers white, showy, about 1 cm wide, 5 petals, in 10 cm long terminal clusters; blooms mid to late summer.  Fruit is capsule-like, brown and splitting open at maturity in fall, persistent through the winter.
  • Sun and well-drained soil
  • Hardy to USDA Zone 4      Native range from east of the Cascade and Sierra Nevada Mountains from Deschutes Co., Oregon, to southern California and eastward across southern Oregon and Idaho, Nevada, Utah, and northern Arizona and New Mexico.
  • millefolium:  many leaved; literally, with a thousand leaves
  • Oregon State Univ. campus: on the slope north of the East Greenhouse (2016)
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    plant habit

  • plant habit, flowering

    plant habit, flowering

  • flower clusters

    flower clusters

  • flower cluster

    flower cluster

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  • flowers and leaves

    flowers and leaves

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    leaves

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