ACHILLEA MILLIFOLIUM

TRUE YARROW, MILFOIL: Delicate, gray-green, feathery leaves and clusters of small white flowers on long stems. Quickly spreading by roots and seeds. Stimulant, tonic, diaphoretic, vulnerary and aromatic. Used for colds if taken at the onset of fever. Used in witchcraft for divination and spells, being called “the Devil’s plaything.” Also used for venereal and menstrual problems. Navajo Indians drink a tea of the plant or chew the stems before intercourse for its aphrodisiac properties. Stronger substitute for hops in beer brewing. Plant with caution; yarrow is a very hardy plant and spreads very rapidly.

ANTHEMIS NOBILIS

ROMAN CHAMOMILE: A hardy, very pleasantly aromatic, slowly spreading ground cover with white and yellow flowers used as a tea (bitter) with strong sedative properties. Often used for nervous stomachs. An old friend of mine once said, “This is good enough to be illegal.” It’s good, but not that good. Also called Chamaemelum nobile. Sun or
part shade.

ARTEMISIA ABROTANUM

SOUTHERNWOOD, OLD MAN, LAD’S LOVE, MAIDEN’S RUIN: A southern wormwood, from the South of Europe. A woody shrub with feathery gray-green leaves and inconspicuous yellow-white flowers. Highly scented. Used as a stimulant tonic and an emmenagogue or as a moth repellent (in French: garde-robe). It is a culinary herb in Italy. Once considered to be an aphrodisiac; 19th century poets used this plant as a clandestine symbol of homosexuality. Grows to 3-4′ tall and likes full sun.

ARTEMISIA ABSINTHUM

FAMILY :: COMPOSITAE

“There fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp….And the name of the star is called Wormwood.”
— Revelations 8:10, 11, The Christian Bible

WORMWOOD, ABSINTHE: One of my favorite herbs. Very bitter, contains thujone. Once used as a stimulant for cerebral exhaustion, as a stomachic, antiseptic, antihelminthic. Marketed commercially in Absorbine Jrâ„¢, a liniment for sprains. It’s also the main ingredient in Absinthe, the internationally demonized alcoholic distillation that “inspired” and drove many of the Impressionist Era and late 19th Century artists and writers (Van Gogh, Degas, Gauguin, Poe, Toulouse-Lautrec, Oscar Wilde, Rimbaud, Picasso, &c).

Written records of the use of wormwood date back to the Assyrians of 600 BC. An old Judea-Christian legend has it that Wormwood first sprang up in the trail of the serpent as s/he left Eden. The genus, Artemisia, is named for Artemis, the Greek goddess of wild nature. Large doses of this plant are poisonous: an early symptom of this poisoning is purple- tinted vision. The hardy, 3-6′ plant is easily grown in almost any situation, preferring full sun.

TO SERVE ABSINTHE:

TO SERVE ABSINTHE II:

Jade Liqueurs absinthe at the Combier distillery

There is a similar plant to A. Absinthum sold in Mexico and popularly used for minor medicinal treatments.

MORE INFORMATION:

• the XPlanta Absinthe Recipes
• NY Times Article
• Absinthe News

RECOMMENDED READING:

ARTEMISIA AFRA

FAMILY :: COMPOSITAE
AFRICAN WORMWOOD: A half-tender, gray, lacy-leafed 3-4′ shrub strongly scented. Said to repel dogs.

Used in traditional African medicine for fevers, bronchial problems and malaria. As an inhalation it is used traditionally to relieve nasal congestion and headache. The fresh leaf is put into the nose for nasal congestion. Warmed leaves relieve inflammation due to hemorrhoids. Narcotic analgesic and antihistaminic properties have been reported. The volatile oil obtained from the leaves has antimicrobial activity against bacteria and fungi, of both public health and agricultural importance.

Artemisia afra is one of the oldest and best known South African medicinal plants, and is still used effectively today in South Africa by people of all cultures.

ARTEMISIA AFRA MONOGRAPH

ARTEMISIA ARBORESCENS

Delicate gray feathery foliage with stalks of small cream colored flowers on a 3-5′ tree-like form. Very impressive as an ornamental, but tender to about 25º f. Full sun. Native to the Mediterranean where it is used as a stomachic.

ARTEMISIA DRACUNCULUS

FRENCH TARRAGON: Delicate acidic-anise flavored popular culinary herb that cannot be grown from seed: it is reproduced from root divisions taken in the fall or early spring. Also, its flavor is lost upon drying; buying dried tarragon is a waste of money. At best it’s roughage, at the worst it has been artificially flavored by the packer. Grows well in pots in a sandy soil mixture in part shade or sun. Dormant in the winter and is somewhat tender.

ARTEMISIA PONTICA

FAMILY :: COMPOSITAE
ROMAN WORMWOOD, VERMOUTH: The most delicate looking (though hardy) of the wormwoods. Grows in a small (1′ tall), slowly spreading mound and has feathery gray-green leaves. Once used to “strengthen” the stomach. Ingredient of Vermouth.

ARTEMISIA VULGARIS

FAMILY :: COMPOSITAE
MUGWORT: Once called the “Mother of Herbs” (mater herbarum). For centuries it has been used as a tonic nervine, to season fatty meats, to make beer, to repel demons and venoms, &c. This variety is very hardy and grows to 8′ tall in any soil and doesn’t spread much by runners like other mugworts. It has dark green, deeply lobed leaves with light undersides and purplish stems.

CALEA ZACATECHICHI

FAMILY :: COMPOSITAE
THLE-PELAKANO, “DREAM HERB”: Easily grown native Mexican subtropical shrub (probably hardy to the high 20ºs) with clusters of small white flowers. It is used medicinally for stomach problems. It quickly grows to about 2 meters tall and likes full or part sun and a bit of moisture.

It is called “the leaf of God” (Thle-pelakano) and used as a tea (of the dried leaves) for divination and to clarify the senses by the Chontal people of Oaxaca, Mexico. After drinking the tea, the dried leaves are smoked while resting in a darkened room. Has been reported to increase dreaming and/or the recollection of dreams. It produces a very restless sleep with intense dream sequences that are easily remembered.

I was introduced to this herb in the early 90′s in the form of an alcoholic extract. My favorite method of ingesting was to get myself prepared for bed in the evening, and then put 15 drops under my tongue. Sitting mellow and comfortable a slight wave of tiredness would come over me about 10 minutes later, lasting only a couple of minutes. If this wave was ignored, there would be no further effect, but if I went to bed straight away, I would drift off to sleep within a few minutes, ‘hypnotized’ by my slow but very amplified heartbeat. I would have many dreams of a profound and insightly nature (at least that’s how it felt at the time), which I would remember in every detail in the morning. There was a slight euphoric feeling that went with the realization of these dreams, or maybe it was just a really good nights sleep, but the mornings always had an upbeat note to them (in spite of the fact that I generally dislike mornings). If I was woken within the first hour of going to sleep, I would be surprised by the number and profoundness of my dreams in such a short timespan, but would not have anymore of these type of dreams after falling asleep again. Sadly, the extract from the same supplier no longer has that effect on me, and no other supplier ever produced an extract that could elicit these effects. This is why I started making my own from my homegrown herb. It is not done by Soxthlet extraction, which I believe destroys many active components, including that of Calea zacatechichi, and my method involves no heat applied to the material at any point in the manufacture, yet it is concentrated to reduce the amount of alcohol and the ‘volume of bitterness’. (Torsten/SAB)

MORE INFORMATION:
- Psychopharmacologic Analysis of an Alleged Oneirogenic Plant
- EROWID

CHRYSANTHEMUM PARTHENIUM

FEVERFEW: A hardy, strongly scented plant to 2-3′ tall, with many small daisy-like flowers that are used for migraine headaches, fevers, “hysteria,” colds, and “to enable women to have children.” It’s an old antidote for using too much opium. Tonic, aperient. Cuts grease when added in small quantities to food. Reported by biologists at the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada, to be a source of melatonin.

CHRYSANTHEMUM ROSEUM

PERSIAN PYRETHRUM: The flowers of this plant are the source of the insecticide pyrethrum, an effective “organic” bug killer. A hardy perennial to 1-2′ tall, it grows best in moist, well drained soil. Pink to scarlet flowers. Also called Pyrethrum roseum.

ECHINACEA PURPUREA

PURPLE CONEFLOWER: Large red-purple flowers with large, wide deep green leaves on 3′ tall stems. Strong immune system stimulant and used by Plains and Eastern Indians as such.

HIERACIUM PILOSELLA

HAWKWEED, HÅRET HØGEURT: A hardy, low-growing, hairy-leafed plant with yellow, dandelion-like flowers. Independent reports are that several joints of these leaves smoked are “consciousness expanding.” Also used for gastrointestinal problems by N. American Indians.

SPILANTHES ACMELLA

FAMILY :: COMPOSITAE
TOOTHACHE PLANT: A creeping, vigorous tropical plant with blood-red tipped, yellow cone flowers. Parts of the plant contain isobutylamides that have the property of numbing the mouth when chewed. Used in Ecuador for relieving tooth aches. Medicinal uses also.

STEVIA REBUNDIANA

FAMILY :: COMPOSITAE
STEVIA: A tender tropical perennial whose leaves are 250 times sweeter than sugar but are without sugar’s calories. From Brazil and Paraguay, it is used traditionally for hypoglycemia and as a digestive aid. The powdered leaves are used culinarily.

Easy to grow in Puerto Vallarta. Give part shade and plenty of water.

AVAILABLE BOOKS:
Stevia books at Amazon.com

TAGETES LUCIDA

FAMILY :: COMPOSITAE
PERICÓN, YAHUTLI, MEXICAN TARRAGON: An anise flavored, tender, evergreen shrub (in mild climates) used culinarily and in smoking mixtures. Likes warm, well drained soil and full sun. Has small yellow flowers and 2″ long narrow green leaves. Good tea. It is used in an inebriating smoking mixture called ye-tumutsáli with Nicotiana rustica (wild tobacco) by the Huichol tribes of Mexico.