Wormwood

Artemisia absinthium

Also: Absinthe wormwood, Grand wormwood

CoolingDryingTonifying

One of the bitterest herbs, in drop doses, for a stalled appetite and stomach.

A silvery, aromatic perennial with finely divided, downy gray-green leaves and nodding yellow flower heads. Wormwood is among the bitterest plants known; a few drops wake a dull appetite and stir digestion, and it has long been used to drive out intestinal worms.

Energetics: Cooling, drying, toning
Taste: Intensely bitter, aromatic
Family: Asteraceae (daisy family)
Parts used: Leaves and flowering tops

Medicinal uses 2

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Traditional useLab and mechanism studiesClinical studies

Sluggish liver & digestionTLC
A few drops before meals wake a dull appetite and get bile and stomach juices flowing.
Indigestion & bloatingTLC
Relieves the heavy, bloated fullness of a stomach that empties slowly.

Preparations

Drop doses of bitters before meals, a weak short-steeped tea, and moth bundles.

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Cautions

Use small doses for no more than four weeks at a time. Its thujone, concentrated in the essential oil, can cause seizures and kidney damage in large amounts.
Never take the essential oil internally.
Leave it out with seizure disorders, kidney disease, or stomach ulcers.
People allergic to ragweed or other daisy-family plants may react to it.

Medication interactions

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Pregnancy & breastfeeding

PregnancyAvoid

Wormwood stimulates the uterus, carries thujone, and has a long history as an abortifacient, so it is avoided throughout pregnancy.

BreastfeedingAvoid

Thujone could reach a nursing baby; it is left out completely while nursing.

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Folklore

Artemisia honors Artemis, Greek goddess of the hunt and of childbirth. Its German name, Wermut, gave us vermouth, first flavored with wormwood. In 1573 the English farmer-poet Thomas Tusser advised strewing it on chamber floors to drive out fleas. France banned absinthe, the green wormwood spirit blamed for madness, in 1915, but analyses of old bottles have since found too little thujone to explain it; the harm came from the alcohol itself.

How to grow

A hardy, drought-tolerant perennial for full sun and lean, well-drained soil. Its roots release compounds that stunt nearby plants, so give it a spot apart from the vegetable bed. Cut the leafy tops just as it begins to flower.

In the wild

Dry waste ground, roadsides, and pastures across Europe, western Asia, and North Africa, and naturalized across much of North America, where some states list it as a noxious weed.

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