GARDENING

Artemisia absinthium Wormwood

Hardy perennial with gray-green leaves

Wormwood is a homely name for a handsome plant; like many artemisias (a genus that also includes French tarragon and California sagebrush), wormwood has slender, silvery leaves that cool off a hot garden, highlight dark corners and turn a plain old path into a shimmery nighttime ribbon.

Wormwood has been a common ingredient in herb gardens ever since it was discovered that a tea made from its leaves rid animals (and humans) of worms.

But its greatest notoriety came as the principal ingredient in absinthe, the now-illegal addictive drink that led to mental illness and seizures. Legend has it that Van Gogh was high on absinthe when he hacked off his ear.

These days wormwood has a much more benign role as a landscape plant (it is extremely bitter, so it never caught on as a culinary herb). Some wormwoods are nearly three feet tall and sprawling, others are more polite. The grayish leaves are lacy, the greenish-yellow flowers small and rather plain.

Native to the Mediterranean area, wormwood flourishes in Southern California, doing quite well with poor soil and very little water; it becomes leggy in shade, because it’s always reaching for the sun.

Wormwood looks particularly good next to other Mediterranean herbs--rosemary and oregano, for two--and also provides a nice underplanting for taller forms of old roses. I have read that wormwood contains a substance toxic to other plants and should not be grown too near its neighbors, but I never noticed a problem (mine was close to a eugenia shrub, a rosemary bush and an orange tree).

Wormwood has important uses beyond the landscape: It is an effective insect repellent, its crushed stems used in sachets for that purpose and a brew made from its leaves used as an aphid control. The dried leaves are beautiful in dried-flower bouquets and wreaths. The branches should be picked in the summer, when the plant is in flower, and dried upside-down in the shade.

Wormwood is usually found in two-inch pots in the herb sections of nurseries; it is easily grown from seed, available from many companies, including Bountiful Gardens, 5798 Ridgewood Road, Willits, Calif. 95490; Heirloom Gardens, P.O. Box 138, Guerneville, Calif. 95446, and Abundant Life, P.O. Box 772, Port Townsend, Wash. 98368.

An excellent source of information about several artemisias and other silvery plants is “The Silver Garden” by Adelma Grenier Simmons, available from Caprilands Herb Farm, 534 Silver St., Coventry, Conn. 06238.