This species grows in the drier regions of the salt marshes. It has a very distinctive grey green foliage, so that despite never being particularly dominant it is quite easy to spot. It can get to be reasonably tall if supported by other neighboring plants like Sea couch grass but with out their helping hand it remains a lowish sprawling plant of no more than 50 cm.
It is in the genus Artemisia which has about six British species. Mugwort is the commonest along with Slender Mugwort (only found in two locations) and Hoary Mugwort (sometimes on Sand Dunes) and Chinese Mugwort (rare and mainly southern). Common Wormwood, which is as you might expect, common, but rarely found in Northern England or Scotland, Field Wormwood ( mostly a Breckland species) and this one, Sea Wormwood found on salt marshes but dotted about around the coast, not everywhere.
All these plants smell quite strongly, not an unpleasant smell, but a little acrid and tangy, a bit like chrysanthemums and a bit like aniseed. This has lead to it being put to a variety of uses. First of all medicinal. The clue is in the name. Wormwood. It was used in the past to get rid of worms and flukes from the gut. It contains various chemicals in the group terpenes, one is a sesquiterpene oil called santonin. This can now be synthesised so the need for collecting the tops of Sea Wormwood has passed, also there are probably less people suffering form intestinal parasites these days. Back in the day the dried flowers and shoots were mixed with castor oil and taken orally. The worms were either killed or sedated by the active ingredients and the castor oil helped with the passing of the dead or comatose worms out of the gut…. Lovely. The other species of Wormwood could also be used but evidently it had a stronger less agreeable flavour so Sea Wormwood was the preferred choice.
The other perhaps more famous use of Wormwood was in the drink Absinthe. Here the ordinary or Common Wormwood which is Artemisia absinthium is one of the botanicals used in this famous or infamous spirit. Note spirit not liqueur as no sugar is added although it might be added when serving. The herbs used include Wormwood, usually the common one but sometimes Sea Wormwood. Also herbs like Green Anise, Hyssop, Lemon Balm, Angelica Sweet Fennel and others. There are various recipes and the ingredients are mixed with a strong alcoholic spirit. It produces a green liquid, and it is sometimes diluted with water, this causes it to become milky like Pernod or Ricard. A tradional method of serving it was to place a sugar lump onto a slotted spoon which is balanced on top of the glass and then a quantity of iced water is poured over the sugar and thus down into the glass. In fact Pernod was originally a type of Absinthe but Wormwood is no longer used in the production of Pernod.
Absinthe is famous because some said it produced hallucinations. It was invented in Switzerland but became very popular in France at the turn of the 19th century, particularly with the Bohemian types like Toulouse-Lautrec, Picasso and Van Gogh to name just a few. Many painters featured it in their art work. However it was made illegal in 1915 and remained so for many years. Now it is legal again and you can purchase it, there are over 200 brands produced in France alone. Could it be the next trendy drink following in the footsteps of the recent popularity for Gin?
The active ingredient which could be responsible for the hallucinatory claims may be another terpene this time a monoterpene called Thujone. It has a similar structure to THC found in Cannabis. However the amount of this in Absinthe was always very small and now is controlled. To get a good hit of it you would need to drink so much Absinthe that you would have passed out so you would not know if you were hallucinating or not.
As they say Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder, but imbibing too much reduces your ardor!
Coastal Wild flowers 