Artemisia carvifolia Seeds | Caraway-leaved Mugwort
LATIN NAME: Artemisia carvifolia
COMMON NAME: Caraway-Leaved Mugwort
Plant Profile
Caraway-leaved mugwort is an annual or biennial wormwood of sixty to a hundred and fifty centimetres with finely divided, carrot-like leaves and small yellow-green heads in loose panicles. It is the plant that the Chinese materia medica calls qing hao, the green herb.
It grows on roadsides and in waste ground across China, Korea and Japan, and it is gathered in summer before the flowers open. It is a different species from the sweet wormwood that supplies artemisinin, and the confusion between the two names is one of the more consequential mistakes in the history of herbal medicine. The stems are striate and the whole plant is covered in fine hairs, which give it a grey-green cast in the field.
Science & Biotechnology
The name qing hao was applied in classical texts to what was probably more than one plant, and the recipe for intermittent fevers in the fourth-century handbook of Ge Hong specifies the herb steeped in cold water and squeezed. When the Chinese programme of the 1970s set out to find the active principle, the first extracts were made from the plant labelled qing hao in the pharmacopoeia of the time.
Those extracts were inactive. The artemisinin came from a second species, huang hua hao, Artemisia annua, which had been treated as a separate and inferior drug. The lesson, now taught in every course on ethnopharmacology, is that a name in a text does not fix a species, and that the plant in the market may not be the plant in the recipe.
Uses & Benefits
The dried herb is used in decoction for low fever and for the feeling of heat in the chest at night, often with turtle shell in the classical formula. It is also made into a tea in summer, when the bitter taste is considered refreshing rather than unpleasant.
In the field the plant is cut for green manure and for compost, and the young leaves are eaten as a spring vegetable in some districts after blanching. The essential oil is used in small amounts in soap and in insect repellent, though the oil of this species is not the source of any drug.
Growing from Seed
Sow in spring on the surface, since the seed is small and needs light, at eighteen to twenty degrees. Germination takes a week, and the seedlings grow fast enough to be planted out within a month. The plant self-sows freely once established.
Grow in full sun on any soil that drains, and cut the plants back after flowering if seed is not wanted. Harvest the herb just before the flowers open, when the scent is strongest, and dry it in bundles in the shade. The species is an annual in cold districts and a biennial where winters are mild.
Our Take
A bitter herb with a long record and a famous identity problem, and the reason to check a Latin name before trusting a recipe. Grow it for tea or for compost.
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