Capillary Wormwood

Capillary wormwood, Artemisia capillaris in Latin and yīn chén hāo in Chinese, is a flowering plant of the daisy family, in the wormwood genus Artemisia. It is a biennial or perennial herb 30 to 80 centimetres tall, sometimes reaching 100, with a vertical woody rootstock and usually one or a few slender, upright, smooth stems of pale purplish or reddish brown. The leaves are silky-haired, and the narrow to wide flower cluster carries many small heads, each with 8 to 12 yellow florets, followed by tiny oblong brown fruits about 0.8 millimetres long. It is native to Pakistan, the western Himalayas, Assam, all of China, Mongolia, the Korean peninsula, parts of eastern Russia, the Ryukyu Islands and Japan, and has been introduced widely across Asia, including Afghanistan, India, Nepal, Southeast Asia, Malesia and Taiwan. It is used in traditional Chinese medicine.