Southernwood

Southernwood is a bushy, shrub-like perennial of the daisy family and a close cousin of mugwort and wormwood, native to Eurasia and Africa and naturalised in scattered places in North America. Grieve calls it the southern wormwood, native to Spain and Italy and brought into England in 1548, where it seldom flowers. It grows to about a metre, with feathery grey-green leaves and small yellow flowers, and gives off a strong camphor-like scent. That scent made it a strewing herb and a guard for stored clothes against moths, which is why the French call it garderobe; churchgoers carried bunches of it to stay awake, and a bunch with rue was set beside prisoners in the dock against jail fever. Its branches dye wool a deep yellow, Grieve gives the herb as a tonic, an emmenagogue and a worm remedy for children, and Northcote records Turner's belief that its smoke drives away serpents. Kynes traces its long tie to love: Pliny put it under the mattress as an aphrodisiac, British women used it in divination to learn whom they would marry, and French lovers gave it in bouquets as a sign of fidelity. Cunningham gives it to Mercury and air for love, lust and protection, carried or kept in the bedroom in love spells and burned as an incense against trouble of every kind.