Chinese Mugwort

Artemisia argyi, silvery wormwood or Chinese mugwort, is an upright, greyish herbaceous perennial about one metre tall with a creeping rhizome. It is native to China, Korea, Mongolia, Japan and the Russian Far East, and grows on dry mountain slopes, river banks, scrub and waste ground, doing better and smelling stronger on poor, dry soil. The leaves are deeply divided, covered in small oil-producing glands, and densely white-woolly beneath, and the whole plant is strongly aromatic. It is called àicǎo, ài yè or ài hāo in Chinese, Chōsen yomogi in Japanese, and Hwanghae ssuk in Korean. The leaves are gathered in spring and summer when the plant is in flower and dried in the shade. In traditional Chinese medicine they are considered bitter, pungent and warm, and associated with the liver, spleen and kidney, and are used as an antiseptic, expectorant, febrifuge and styptic. They are also burned in moxibustion, in cones, sticks or compressed balls set on an acupuncture needle.