Perennials, 5-15(-25) cm (cespitose), faintly aromatic. Stems brownish purple, glabrous. Leaves deciduous, bright green; blades (proximalmost petiolate) ovate, 1.5-5 × 1-2.5 cm, 2-3-pinnately lobed (cauline sessile, ternately or pinnately lobed, terminal lobes lance-linear, 1-6 × 0.5-1 mm), faces glabrous or sparsely hairy, glandular. Heads (5-9, pedunculate or sessile, spreading or drooping) in spiciform arrays 3-9 × 0.5-1 cm. Involucres globose, 4-5(-7) × 4-5(-7) mm. Phyllaries green (margins light green), ± hairy. Florets: pistillate 14-16 (glandular, style branches exsert, linear, spreading); bisexual 40-70; corollas 1.5-2 mm, glabrous or glandular (styles shorter than corollas). Cypselae ca. 1 mm (apices flat), glabrous.

Flowering late summer-fall. Steppes, alkaline meadows, stony slopes; 0-1400 m; Yukon; Asia.

The sole North American occurrence of Artemisia rupestris in southwestern Yukon is a remarkable disjunction from the Asiatic range of this species.