266 COMPOSIT.^E. [Artemisia. 



XVIII. Artemisia, Linn. Wormwood. Mugwort. 



" Achenes obovate, with a minute epigynous disk. Pappus 0. 

 Receptacle without scales. Involucre ovate or rounded, imbri- 

 cated. Ligulate florets, if any, in a single row, short or slender 

 and awl-shaped. (Heads homochromous) ." — Br. Fl. 



* Receptacle hairy. 



1. A. Ahsinthimn, L. Common Wormiuood. " Leaves bipin- 

 natifid clothed with short silky down, segments lanceolate, heads 

 hemispherical drooping many-flowered, outer scales of the invo- 

 lucre linear silky, inner ones roundish scarious." — Br. Fl. p. 229. 

 E. B. t. 1230. 



On hedgebanks, by roadsides, and in dry waste places about villages, farmyards, 

 &c. ; frequent. Fl. August, September. If. 



Whole herb conspicuous for its silvery gray or hoary aspect, proceeding from 

 the copious, adpressed, centrally affixed pubescence. Root perennial, of several 

 long, stout, flexuose, pale and branching fibres, fleshy externally, hard, woody 

 and white in the centre. Stem I or more, erect or slightly ascending, from about 

 2 to 4 feet high, terete, in the larger and older plants of a ligneous texture below, 

 and covered with a brownish and roughish bark, whitish, furrowed, angulato-stri- 

 ate, zigzag and more herbaceous above, where it is filled with a beautiful cellular 

 tissue, copiously and virgalely branched ; the branches very long, leafy, erect or 

 patent, and like the main stem hoary with fine, close, adjiressed, silky hairs fixed 

 by their centres. Leaves alternate, sericeo-tomentose, very hoary beneath with the 

 same matted and medifixt pubescence as the stem, less so and often considerably 

 green above, the lowermost and those of the first year's shouts on long channelled 

 petioles, bipinnato-pinnatifid or pinnatisect, roundish or ovate in outline, their 

 primary segments deeply, unequally and for the most part trifidly pinnatisect ; the 

 ulterior segments mostly oblong or elliptical, pointed or obtuse, quite entire, flat ; 

 stem-leaves on shorter stalks, their segments longer, narrower and more acute, 

 becoming gradually less compound as they ascend, the superior ones at length 

 trifid, the highest of all linear-elliptical and undivided. Heads of flowers small, 

 hemispherical, nodding or unilateral, mostly solitary or in pairs from the bosom 

 of the upper leaves, or of a linear-oblong bract, in erect, leafv, alternate, simple or 

 somewhat compounded racemes along the stem and branches, constituting in the 

 aggregate a large, virgate, bushy panicle. Peduncles unequal, that of the outer- 

 most head in each pair extremely short, of the inner twice or thrice that length 

 and often bracteate near its summit. Involucral bracts closely imbricated ; the 

 outer few sublinear-obtuse, very downy ; inner roundish, gibbous and greenish at 

 the back, with broad, si ariose, pale blown, fringed margins. Florets numerous in 

 each head, yellow or reddii-h. Achenes minute, grayish brown, oblong-obovate or 

 obconic, sulidiaphanous, strongly wrinkled. Receptacle convex, covered with pel- 

 lucid, white, setaceous and membranous pale®. 



exactly one in which I should expect to meet with a plant delighting in loose 

 sand or pebbles, but that the continual alteration which the shores of the island 

 are undergoing, from landslips and the encroachments of the sea, may adequately 

 account fur the disappearance of the Sea Cotton-weed with the changes wrought 

 in the locality. 



