156 



N. Ord. COMPOSITE. 

 Tribe Anthemidea. 



Genus Artemisia,* Linn. B. & H., ii, p. 435. Species 150 

 200, natives almost entirely of the northern hemisphere in 

 both old and new worlds; . 



156. Artemisia Absinthium,t Linn., Sp. Plant., ed. I, p. 848 



(1753). 



Wormwood. 



Syn. Absinthium officinale, Lam. 



Figures. Woodville, t. 22; Hayne, ii, 1. 11 ; Nees, t. 235 ; Steph. & Ch., 

 t. 58, 2nd fig.; Berg & Sch., t. 22 b; Syme, E. Bot., v, t. 731; 

 Reichenb., Ic. Fl. Germ., t. 1029. 



Description. An herbaceous perennial, with a rather large, 

 woody rootstock, giving off short barren leafy shoots and 

 upright branched flowering stems. Stems 1 3 feet high, stiff, 

 almost woody at the base, furrowed, silky with adpressed white 

 hairs, branches short, ascending. Leaves all finely pubescent 

 with close silky hairs, greyish-green above, almost white beneath, 

 those of the barren shoots and base of the stem long-stalked, 

 broadly ovate in outline, tripinnatisect, with the ultimate segments 

 short, oblong, blunt, those higher up bipinnatisect, pinnatisect, and 

 (the highest ones) simple, with the ultimate segments linear-oblong, 

 acute, entire. Heads very numerous, about s inch wide, hemi- 

 spherical, nodding, on short, slender stalks from the axils of 

 longer linear leaves, and with a few small linear bracts below 

 the involucre, arranged in numerous erect, lax, somewhat uni- 

 lateral, slender racemes at the upper part of the stem and 

 branches, the whole forming a dense pyramidal, leafy inflo- 

 rescence ; involucral-scales in two or three rows, imbricated, 

 obovate, blunt, with a green centre and scarious margins, pube- 



* Artemisia, the classical name for A. arborescens, L. ? or some allied species 

 dedicated to the goddess "Apre/itc, the Roman Diana. 



t Absinthium, in Greek fyivOiov, the classical name for several species of 

 this genus. 



