Artemisia abrotanum
species of plant
Artemisia abrotanum, the southernwood, lad's love, or southern wormwood, is a species of flowering plant in the sunflower family. It is native to Eurasia and Africa but naturalized in scattered locations in North America. Other common names include: old man, boy's love, oldman wormwood, lover's plant, appleringie, garderobe, Our Lord's wood, maid's ruin, garden sagebrush, European sage, sitherwood and lemon plant.
Southernwood has a strong camphor-like odour and was historically used as an air freshener or strewing herb. It forms a small bushy shrub, which is widely cultivated by gardeners. The grey-green leaves are small, narrow and feathery. The small flowers are yellow. It can easily be propagated by cuttings, or by division of the roots.
This plant has gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit.
Description
Shrub-like herbaceous perennial in the Asteraceae or daisy family.
The public source identifies “Artemisia abrotanum” as species of plant. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Artemisia, abrotanum and species.
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The date and method of observation matter as much as the stated conclusion, especially where classification or consensus has changed. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q157976. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Artemisia abrotanum” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.