Mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris L.)

Leaves, best cut immediately before flowering.

Asteraceae (sunflower family, also known as aster family), subfamily Asteroidae.

Aromatic and bitter. See also zedoary on the topic of bitter spices.

The essential oil (0.03 to 0.3%) contains a wealth of different terpenes and terpene derivatives, e. g., 1,8 cineol, camphor, linalool, thujone, 4-terpineole, borneol, α-cardinol and further mono- and sesqui­terpenes. Quantitative and qualitative composition varies strongly with soil, climate, fertilizing, and harvest time.

Roman wormwood, Artemisia pontica www.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de

Thujone, one of the oil’s main con­stituents, is a mono­terpenoid ketone also ap­pearing in sage, thuja and, ac­cording to some sources, in a close rela­tive of mug­wort, southern­wood. It is com­mon­ly hold re­spon­sible for the toxi­city of worm­wood-flavoured alco­holics, parti­cularly absinthe, the drug of the age in France a hundred years ago (Fin de siècle). Absinthe was a potent liqueur flavoured with anise, fennel, plenty of worm­wood and other plants; it was drunk together with water and sugar. The high alcohol content (often ex­ceeding 60%) and the thujone (typically, 50–100 ppm) both contributed to its psycho-active properties. Since chronic consume resulted in severe nerve damage, absinthe was banned in nearly all European countries, with the exception of Portugal and Spain. Liqueurs based solely on anise (Pernod, Pastis) could establish them­selves as alter­natives for absinthe.

Within the European Union, the ban was revoked in 1998, and absinthe has become legal again, although the thujone content is now restricted to max. 35 ppm. It is an open question whether the liquor will regain its former popularity.

As wormwood taste intensively bitter, it is almost impossible to incorporate quantities sufficient for thujone poisoning by accident. Even if the thujone is separated from the bitter absinthin by distillation, the resulting product is still too bitter to drink without sugar. Wormwood-flavoured wine (vermouth) contains only traces of thujone.

Temperate Europe and Asia.

English mugwort contains an element mu- meaning fly, bug; cf. Greek myia [μυία], Russian mukha [муха] and German Mücke mosquito. The Proto-Indo–European stem, MU-, is obviously onomatopoetic in origin. Folk-etymologically, the first element in mugwort is often assumed to refer to the herb’s use in beer-brewing (mug of beer; see also gale for notes on brewing).

Mugwort plant

Mugwort (flower cluster)

The second ele­ment in mugwort is an old term for plant (Old English wyrt plant, root) found in many other Germanic languages: German Wurzel root (Old High German wurz also had the broader meaning plant), Swedish ört, and Gothic waúrts. Less closely related are Greek rhadamnos [ῥάδαμνος] branch, Latin radix root and Old Irish fren root, which all derive from a Proto-Indo–European root WRED. For further etymological connections, see horseradish.

Swedish malört moth plant for the closely related wormwood is a similar formation; allegedly, mugwort’s or wormwood’s smell drives away moths from clothes.

The Modern German name, Beifuß, goes back to Middle High German bībōʒ and Old High German pīpōʒ; it is usually derived from an Old High German verb bōʒen beat, but the connection is unclear; according to one theory some kind of squeezing the leaves for food preparation is indicated, according to another, the name refers to some apotropaeic quality of the plant (it beats or drives away evil powers).

Already in Middle High German, the plant name bībōʒ got modified towards Fuß foot by folk etymology, as can be inferred from the parallel form bīvuoʒ. This probably relates to an ancient belief, reported by Plinius, that mugwort leaves applied to the feet can make people run longer and faster.

The various Germanic names of the related plant wormwood (Artemisia absinthium) are not well understood. English wormwood appears to allude to the vermifuge properties of that plant, but this is just folk-etymology: The name can be traced back via Old English vermod to a Common Germanic root wermodaz, which also lies behind German Wermut (Old High German wermuota). Cf. also the name of a wormwood-flavoured wine, vermouth. French armoise amère bitter mugwort refers to the increased bitterness of wormwood compared to mugwort.

The botanic species name of wormwood, absinthium, is indeed the classical Latin name for that plant and derives from Greek apsinthion [ἀψίνθιον] (in the New Testament apsinthos [ἄψινθος]); the word still lives in some Romance tongues: Italian assenzio, Spanish ajenjo, Galician axenxo and Portuguese absinto. It has also spread to some unrelated languages, like Basque axinse and Hebrew absint [האבסינט].

Wormwood flowers

Sterile wormwood shoot

The etymology of Greek apsin­thion is not clearly ex­plained; a theory derives it from a- (nega­tion) + psinthos [ψίνθος], an obscure ad­jective meaning enjoy­able cf. also Sanskrit ashiva [अशिव] unpleasant, pernicious. The meaning of the com­pound, un­pleasant, would seem fit for a bitter herb, but may well be the product of folk etymology. A better guess is that the name actually stems from some Middle Eastern language: In Middle Persian, the name aspand is recorded for a bitter plant (perhaps Syrian rue, Peganum harmala); modern Farsi has afsentin [افسنطین] wormwood and espand [اسپند] Syrian rue. This plant is not related to the herb commonly called rue.

Most Slavonic tongues have similar names for mugwort and its relatives: Polish piołun, Belarusian palyn [палын], Slovak palina, Czech pelyňek, Slovenian and Croatian pelin and also Bulgarian pelin [пелин] (see below for Russian and Ukrainian cognates). Related names are also found in other geographically close languages, e. g., Albanian, Romanian and Turkish pelin, and Lithuanian pelynas. These names are derived from a Common Slavonic root PAL burn, bright, clear, which itself derives from Proto-Indo–European PEL gray; cf. English pale (of Romance origin) and the native Germanic fallow, and examples from classical languages Latin pallidus and Sanskrit pandu [पांडु] pale. The semantic connection is not clear: It has been suggested to relate the name either to the light gray foliage of wormwood or to its burning bitter taste. See below for another possible explanation of these names.

Explanation of the pelin-type names if further complicated by the fact that, although phonetically very similar, these names have in part deviating denotation: Some of them refer primarily to wormwood (or the related Pontic or Roman wormwood, Artemisia pontica) and others to mugwort; yet most have a broader meaning extending to several members of the genus Artemisia. Even within a language, usage may differ regionally depending on what species is most abundant locally. To denote a single species unambiguously, qualifying adjectives are commonly used, e. g., in Russian: Mugwort polyn obyknovennaya [полынь обыкновенная] common polyn, tarragon polyn estragonnaya [полынь эстрагонная] tarragon-polyn, southernwood polyn lechebnaya [полынь лечебная] healing polyn and wormwood polyn gorkaya [полынь горькая] bitter polyn.

Mugwort with flowers. Note the black stalks.

In some Sla­vonic lan­guages (of the West­ern and Eastern branches), mugwort has another, unrelated name which is said to mean black stalk or dark grass, e. g., Czech černobýl, Ukrainian chornobyl [чорно­биль], and Russian chernobyl [черно­быль]; the latter, however, is less commonly used than polyn discussed above. See nigella for an explanation of the black part. In both Russian and in Ukrainian, the same names apply to a city in Northern Ukraine which became famous due to a disastrous accident in a nuclear power plant in 1986. This has often been linked to a verse of the biblical Revelation about the Third Trumpet, when the angel cast a star into the waters, making them bitter and deadly: kai to onoma tou asteros legetai ho Apsinthos [καὶ τὸ ὄνομα τοῦ ἀστέρος λέγεται ὁ Ἄψινθος] and the name of the star is called wormwood. Taking the bitter waters as a metaphor for radioactive pollution, and identifying wormwood with mugwort, one might then interpret the reactor accident as predicted by the Bible.

Actually, wormwood and mugwort, though closely related, are not identical. Rather correctly, Russian and Ukrainian Bible translations render the Greek plant name apsinthos not as chernobyl or chornobyl, but as polyn (Russian imya sej zvezde polyn [имя сей звезде полынь], Ukrainian a jmennya sori tij polyn [а ймення зорі тій полин]). Confused by the inherent ambiguity of that word, some Western journalist have tried to make a case that the herb mentioned in the Bible is indeed the same that is called chernobyl, which actually may be true (for a Russian or Ukrainian Bible translation), because polyn and chernobyl have indeed overlapping denotation. This is, however, a good example of a question that cannot reasonably be answered using a translated text; fortunately, the Greek original uses an unambiguous term apsinthos that applies only to wormwood (and maybe other pale-leaved, highly bitter relatives like Pontic wormwood), but never to mugwort. Yet chernobyl means mugwort, nothing else.

Yet there is another connection between mugwort and burning which might account for the Slavonic names derived from the root PAL: The Shamanistic moxa practice (also spelt moksha), which originated in Central Asia, but is today also part of East Asian medicine. In that ritual, a Shaman combusts dried herbs for healing purposes. In Chinese medicine, the method is often employed as following: A thin slice of ginger is placed on a suitable acupuncture point, a small portion of the dried herb is layered on top and slowly combusted. Both the heat and the constituents of the herb are supposed to contribute to the healing power. The Japanese term yomogi [蓬, よもぎ] represents mugwort and related Artemisia species; it can also be written 艾, but the latter kanji more often means the moxa method proper (Japanese mogusa [艾, もぐさ]). Specific names for particular artemisias are usually formed with the former kanji logograph, e. g., niga-yomogi [苦蓬, にがよもぎ] bitter yomogi (wormwood) or oo-yomogi [大蓬, おおよもぎ] large yomogi (A. montana). Mugwort also has the more specific name ōshū-yomogi [おうしゅうよもぎ] European yomogi.

For the derivation of the botanical genus name Artemisia, see southernwood.

Nature One Health: Mugwort Alles over Bijvoet (natuurlijkerwijs.com) About the city Chernobyl (en.wikipedia.org) Poisonous Plants of North Carolina: Wormwood Recipe: Japanese Rice Cake (yomogi mochi [蓬餅, よもぎもち]) (the.honoluluadvertiser.com) More mochi (rice cake) recipes (geocities.com) Recipe and cultural notes: Bratgans, Weihnachtsgans (German stuffed christmas goose) (ottawa.diplo.de via archive.org) Rezept: Gefüllte Weihnachtsgans (helmut.friedrichs-essen.de)