Artemisia absinthium

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Artemisia absinthium growing wild in the Caucasus


Plant Characteristics
Habit   herbaceous

Lifespan: perennial
Origin: Eurasia, N Africa
Cultivation
Exposure: sun
Water: moderate, dry
Features: flowers, fragrance
Flower features: yellow
Scientific Names

Asteraceae >

Artemisia >

absinthium >


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Artemisia absinthium (absinthium, absinthe wormwood, wormwood, common wormwood, or grand wormwood) is a species of wormwood, native to temperate regions of Eurasia and northern Africa.

It is a herbaceous perennial plant, with a hard, woody rhizome. The stems are straight, growing to 0.8-1.2 m (rarely 1.5 m) tall, grooved, branched, and silvery-green. The leaves are spirally arranged, greenish-grey above and white below, covered with silky silvery-white trichomes, and bearing minute oil-producing glands; the basal leaves are up to 25 cm long, bipinnate to tripinnate with long petioles, with the cauline leaves (those on the stem) smaller, 5-10 cm long, less divided, and with short petioles; the uppermost leaves can be both simple and sessile (without a petiole). Its flowers are pale yellow, tubular, and clustered in spherical bent-down heads (capitula), which are in turn clustered in leafy and branched panicles. Flowering is from early summer to early autumn; pollination is anemophilous. The fruit is a small achene; seed dispersal is by gravity.

It grows naturally on uncultivated, arid ground, on rocky slopes, and at the edge of footpaths and fields.


Read about Artemisia absinthium in the Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture 

Artemisia absinthium, Linn. Wormwood. Absinthium. Almost shrubby, 2-4 ft. high, spreading and branchy, white-silky: Lvs. 2-3-parted into oblong, obtuse lobes: heads small and numerous, in leafy panicles.—Wormwood is native to Eu., but it occasionally escapes from gardens. It is a common garden herb, being used in domestic medicine, especially as a vermifuge. Wormwood tea is an odorous memory with every person who was reared in the country. See Absinthe and Wormwood.


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Cultivation

The plant can easily be cultivated in dry soil. They should be planted under bright exposure in fertile, mid-weight soil. It prefers soil rich in nitrogen. It can be propagated by growth (ripened cuttings taken in March or October in temperate climates) or by seeds in nursery beds. It is naturalised in some areas away from its native range, including much of North America.

Propagation

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