Perennials, 8-20 cm, mildly aromatic. Stems gray-brown, glabrate or finely pubescent. Leaves deciduous, gray-green; petiolate; blades (basal) broadly spatulate, 2-4 × 0.5 cm, pinnately lobed (lobes ca. 1.5 mm wide; cauline smaller, 1-pinnately lobed or entire), faces silky-hairy. Heads borne singly or (2-5, spreading to nodding, pedunculate) in paniculiform or racemiform arrays 1-5 × 0.5-1 cm. Involucres broadly hemispheric, 5-8 × 5-8(-10) mm. Phyllaries gray (margins dark brown to black), villous. Florets: pistillate 7-27; bisexual 32-100; corollas (yellow tinged with red), 2-3 mm (including exsert anthers), mostly glabrous (embedded in tangled receptacular hairs). Cypselae 1.5-2 mm, glabrous. 2n = 14.

Flowering mid-late summer. Alpine meadows; 3500-4000 m; Colo., N.Mex., Wyo.

Artemisia pattersonii can be distinguished from the closely related A. scopulorum by its heads being borne singly and narrower phyllary margins.