[3] Artemisia nesiotica is a small shrub growing up to about 50 cm (20 inches) tall and generally rounded in shape.

The foliage is made up of woolly leaves divided into many thin, flat, threadlike segments.

[4] The earliest name given to the plaint was Crossostephium insulare, coined by Per Axel Rydberg in 1916.

[5] In 1935, Philip Alexander Munz declared this to be a variety of Artemisia californica.

[6] Peter Raven later wanted to recognize the Channel Island plants as a distinct species within Artemisia, but the name Artemisia insularis had already been used for a Kuril Islands plant in 1936.