Due to winter weather, the museum will be closed Saturday, January 24th. Stay safe! Read More
Due to winter weather, the museum will be closed Saturday, January 24th. Stay safe and warm, friends.
Southernwood
Southernwood
Artemisia abrotanum
AKA: Old man, lad’s love, appleringie, garderobe, Our Lord’s wood, maid’s ruin, garden sagebrush, European sage, witherwood, lemon plant
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Historically Used to Treat: Gas, cramps fever, eye problems, acne and blemishes, worms and childhood parasites, splinters and thorns, dry ulcers/old wounds, venereal disease, baldness, hysteria, pain, swelling, gangrene, urinary tract infections, jaundice
Other Uses: Aromatic bitter (similar to related wormwood), and/moth/snake repellant, nasal spray for allergies, odor neutralizer, yellow dye, sometimes used in absinthe instead of wormwood, said the help a beard to grow.
“It is a gallant….plant, worthy of more esteem than it hath.” - Nicholas Culpeper, 1653
CAUTION: Contains thujone, may be toxic in large quantities
Culpeper's The Complete Herbal (1653) - On Southernwood
A Brotanum, mas, fœmina.
Southernwood, male and female. It is hot and dry in the third degree, resists poison, kills worms; outwardly in plaisters, it dissolves cold swellings, and helps the bitings of venomous beasts, makes hair grow: take not above half a dram at a time in powder. [230]
Culpeper also lists Southernwood as an herb that cleanses, ‘provokes the terms’ (causes menstruation) in women, and resists poisons [264].
Source: Project Gutenberg EBook of Culpeper’s The Complete Herbal, [230, 264]
Image Gallery
Image Sources
Images 1 & 2: From JLMH’s Herb Garden
William Turner’s A New Herball (1551) - Library of Congress Scan