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Artemisia maritima Subsp. maritima (L) ~ Sea Wormwood

NOMENCLATURE

Artemisia : see A. vulgaris

maritima : growing by the sea.

Wormwood : see A.absinthium

OTHER NAMES : old woman : from hoary leaves

BOTANICAL DESCRIPTION

TYPE : perennial, strongly aromatic herb, with short branching vertical woody stock, producing non-flowering rosettes & decumbent then erect flowering shoots 20-50cm, usually downy, branched above. H-Ch. LEAVES : 2-5cm, mostly bipinnate, the ultimate segments linear, 1 mm wide, blunt. Lower leaves stalked, auricled. Upper leaves simply pinnate, sessile. Uppermost pinnatifid or entire, all >or< woolly on both sides, punctate. FLOWERS : heads l-2mm diam., ovoid, longer than wide, erect or drooping, numerous, in leafy racemose panicles with short branches. Bracts oblong, outer herbaceous, downy, inner with broad scarious margins. Receptacle glabrous. Flowers yellowish or reddish, all hermaphrodite but central sterile. Achenes rare. Wind pollinated. Fl. 8-9. 2n=36, 54.

HABITAT : drier parts of salt marshes & sea walls

DISTRIBUTION : native, locally common on coasts of Great Britain, N. to N. Aberdeen & Cumbria, absent extreme W. & N.
Very local on E. & W. coasts of Ireland. N.W. Europe from W. France to Denmark & S. Sweden.

VARIETY : A.m. subgallica (Rouy).

HISTORICAL MEDICINAL USES

Culpepper : "boiling water poured upon it as stomachic, or tincture in brandy. Hysteric complaints completely cured. In the scurvy & hypochondrical disorders of studious sedentary men, a strong infusion." Dr. John Hill : "Gives appetite, assists digestion use flowery tops & young shoots." Thornton 'Family Herbal' : "beat up in thrice its weight of fine sugar, it is made into a conserve ordered by the London college." 1930's : flowering tops & young shoots as for Wormwood (A. Absinthium), but less powerfull. Also as tonic, aromatic & intermittenyt fever. Source of herba absinthii maritimi, used as stomachic, tonic & flavouring herb.

OTHER USES

Source of santonin, used as vermifuge.