Localities.— I n waste ground, old stone-pits, and about villages; frequent. 
Perennial. — Flowers in August, and September. 
Root woody, branched at the crown, furnished with numerous 
fibres below. Stems numerous, a foot or more high, somewhat 
tufted, branched, striated, leafy, whitish, with very short down. 
Leaves alternate, numerous, doubly pinnatifid, with broadish, blunt, 
entire segments, clothed, like every other part of the herb, with 
close, silky hoariness ; lower ones on long petioles ; upper on 
shorter, broader, somewhaf winged ones. Flowers in numerous, 
aggregate, leafy clusters, stalked, drooping, hemispherical. Scales 
of the involucrum bluntly egg-shaped, green, cottony at the back, 
the edges membranous ; florets numerous, pale yellow, or buff 
coloured. Style large, very deeply cloven. Receptacle convex, 
clothed with fine upright hairs. 
Sir J. E. Smith, in English Flora, mentions a variety having 
been found at Gamlingay, near Cambridge, in which the leaves 
that accompanied the flowers were much larger and broader than 
usual, and most of them undivided. 
Wormwood, is a native of almost every part of Europe ; it is 
one of those domestic plants, which, associated with mallow, mug- 
wort, hemlock, mock, &c. would seem to follow the footsteps of man, 
thriving amidst dust and rubbish, and to be found wherever a few 
miserable hovels a're erected. Ramond and De Candolle ob- 
served several of these species among the ruins of cottages where 
shepherds had once lived, high on the Pyrennees; and some years 
ago Mr. Winch remarked the same circumstance in the Highlands 
of Scotland. “ The constant appearance of these weeds about 
towns and villages,” says Mr. Winch, in his Essay on the Geogra- 
phical Distribution of Plants , &c. (2nd ed.) p. 20., “ is a curious 
and inexplicable phenomenon, for no one ever cuhivated such plants 
for utility, much iess for ornament.” 
The leaves and flowers of Wormwood are intensely bitter, so as 
to become a proverb. They are employed In some parts of Wales 
as a substitute for hops; also laid in drawers and chests to drive 
away insects from clothes. A considerable quantity of essential oil 
rises from this herb in distillation, which is used both externally 
and internally to destroy worms. The leaves, put into sour beer, 
soon remove the ascesceney. They resist putrefaction, and are 
therefore a principal ingredient in antiseptic fomentations. The 
vegetable alkali of the shops has been usually procured from this 
herb, and called Salt of Wormwood, but it retains none of its 
peculiar qualities. 
Dr. Stokes says, that the plant steeped in lioiling water, and repeatedly applied 
to a bruise, will remove the pain in a short time, and prevent the swelling and dis- 
coloration of the part. — Turkeys are fond of the plant, but scarcely an animal be- 
sides. — Livid Absinthii, and the rare and elegant Tlume-moth, Pterophorus 
spilodactylus, are found upon it. 
The trivial name of this plant, ( Absinthium ,) is derived from the Greek, and 
signifies, without sweetness. It is, therefore, very appropriately made the emblem 
of absence ; which, according to L \ Fontain, is the greatest of evils. See With ■ 
liot. Arr-, Thornton's Fam. Herb., &c. 
