The Wonderful World of Wormwood!

I’m so happy that today you get to meet Larissa! Following is a guest post from her about a valuable plant in Alaska, but a little about what Larissa offers first. Her friendly blog at Alaska Herbal Solutions will give you great info on useful plants. She does serious research and brings it to you in a delightful, easy reading manner that also includes the technical goodies.

She even has a page of videos! And herbal how-to’s! Yep, this woman has it together. So enjoy this post that she gifted us with, and then check out her website.

Today Larissa is telling us about wormwood and its uses. She sent wonderfully illustrative photos of this herb. Wormwood doesn’t just pop up everywhere in Southeast Alaska, although I have read that it occurs throughout the area. I have found wormwood on gravel river bars up the Stikine River. It might be a good addition to your garden, so that you have a supply close by.

Here’s Larissa - enjoy!

The Wonderful World of Wormwood!

Hi there! My name is Larissa, over at Alaska Herbal Solutions . I live on the Kenai Peninsula and love Alaskan herbs and plants. In addition to teaching people about the food and medicinal uses of Alaskan plants, I make products of only ingredients that grow in Alaska. One day I was searching for an article about harvesting devil’s club and found Alaska Floats My Boat. After getting what I needed, I wandered around the website some more.

“This information is wonderful!” I thought to myself. So I contacted Jo to see if I could help her write an article about any herbs she didn’t have down in Southeast Alaska. The one she wanted was artemisia, or wormwood, so here it is!

Disclaimer: This article is informational only. The information is not meant to diagnose, treat, or cure any disease or illness. Any information should be discussed with your doctor before trying.

Wormwood has a distinctive smell to go along with a distinctive leaf.

Wormwood is one of my favorite herbs and there are several different types in Alaska. The ones pictured in this article are Artemisia tilesii. The other two, that I’m aware of, are A. frigida and A. artica artica (yes, there are two “articas” in there). In the world, there are between 200 and 400 plants in the Artemisia genus - not all of them have the same uses. Here in Alaska, wormwood is also known as stinkweed, mugwort, Caiggluk by the Yupik, caribou leaves, prairie sagewort, and wild sage.

I tend to find wormwood in rocky outcroppings while I'm hiking. They seem to grow nicely in well drained soil if you're going to try to transplant them.

Another defining feature of wormwood is the silver underside.

Food Uses for Wormwood:

Wormwood is extremely bitter, so it’s best used as a spice. I like to replace regular sage with it when I’m cooking.

You may be thinking “Isn’t artemisia what they make absinthe out of?” Yes, and no. There is a specific strain called A. absinthium that is used to make absinthe, so if you were excited to go make some, I’m sorry to burst your bubble and tell you that it doesn’t grow up in Alaska. However, you can still use it in brews for beer and other alcohols. Other than that, wormwood is so bitter that it doesn’t make a good food source. Plus it also has some components that cause problems when it builds up in your system. I’ll go over those more in the cautions section.

Medicinal Uses for Wormwood:

Medicinal actions - Anthelmintic, antimicrobial, aromatic, bitter, emmenagogue, hepatic, stimulant, tonic, vulnerary, carminative. The genus name Artemisia comes from Artemis, the Greek Goddess of wild animals, the hunt, vegetation, chastity and childbirth. This is thought to be assigned to plants that helped bring on menstruation for women, which all of the wormwood that grow in Alaska can definitely help with. Drinking the tea during particularly painful menstruation or if it’s late (make sure you’re not pregnant) is very helpful.

One of my favorite uses for wormwood is as an insect repellent. This is especially useful if I’ve forgotten my bug spray. I take the leaves, crush and rub them between my hands to get the juices coming out. Then I rub the juices over all of my exposed skin to keep those pesky bugs away. You can also plant it on the perimeter of your garden to help keep pests away.

For colds, a tea can be made to drink or gargle. Combine it with yarrow, chamomile (pineapple weed), white clover buds, and spruce tips to pack a whammy against that cold! The volatile oils of it can also help clear up sinuses, so mix it with yarrow, spruce tips, and juniper in a steam bath.

Topically, it can be used for sore muscles, it works well with devil’s club or arnica. It can also be used on cuts and scrapes due to its antimicrobial properties. If you don’t want to make a salve out of it, you can add it to a bath.

As the common name suggests, a tea of wormwood can help get rid of worms in the digestive system. Drink a cooled down tea to get help your body expel them. Additionally, it can help with digestion in general.

There is also promising research that wormwood can be used to help with cancer. I wrote a whole article on it here if you want to read up more on it.

Here is what the flowers of wormwood look like in late summer.

Cautions:

Internally, wormwood should be used in moderation and small doses. Besides being in the asteraceae (daisy) family meaning you should avoid using it if you’re allergic to daisies, it also contains thujone in the leaves. Thujone, also known as absinthol, is the volatile oil that makes Absinthe dangerous (the A. Absinthium has the most from what I can gather, which is why it’s made from that strain specifically). It can build up in your system with use over time, which is why it should be used moderately.

A big thank you to Jo for letting me write this article for Alaska Floats My Boat. As a special thank you for reading my post on Alaska Floats My Boat, I have a PDF just for you! Sign up for my weekly newsletter here and you will receive a complimentary PDF about 15 Alaskan Weeds That Are Useful.

Thank you so much for reading this article, I hope you found it helpful,

Larissa

And a few related links from Alaska Beachcomber at Alaska Floats My Boat:

Food and Medicine from Nature index

Harvesting Devil’s Club Root

Devil’s Club Sun Tea

Making Devil’s Club Salve and Tincture

Wild Tea

Edible Goosetongue or Poisonous Arrowgrass?

It was so good to see the sun today! The lengthening days have me thinking of spring gathering, and that reminded me of a post that I didn’t get out to you last year. I’m fixing that today. So this year how about adding goosetongue to your veggie choices? It’s too early to harvest yet, but maybe this will take your mind off of the cement-like snowbanks lurking in your driveway.

Let’s go for a walk on the beach…

It is spring to mid-summer, the weather is pleasant, and things have greened up. A few seagulls are whining and looking aimless because the salmon haven’t come in yet. The eagle in the big tree on the point is watching you because, face it, you are the most interesting thing happening on the beach.

As you get close to the rocky point you notice goosetongue growing at the top of the beach. Some of it has bits of seaweed stuck in the leaves from the last high tide, but there’s some goosetongue above the tide line that looks pretty clean. Knowing that goosetongue is a tasty snack and delicious potherb you mosey on up to harvest some. A little tickle in the back of your mind tells you that there was something about a look-alike plant that is poisonous, though. Now what was it that the plant book said?

Well, let’s leave the beach for a bit so that I can show you some pictures of goosetongue and arrowgrass. Goosetongue is great food. Arrowgrass has a small part of the plant that might be edible in early spring, but the leaves are poisonous because they contain cyanide-producing glycosides. The two plants are similar enough that they do get mixed up. Worse yet, they often grow right beside each other.

Goosetongue and arrowgrass growing together

Goosetongue (Plantago maritima ssp. juncoides) is in the plantain family. It is also called sea plantain, seaside plantain, and ribwort. The less-used common name, ‘ribwort,’ makes sense to me because of the plant’s ribbed leaves and ‘wort’ meaning ‘useful plant.’

Goosetongue leaves and stems grow in a cluster from the ground. Each fleshy leaf has ribs running lengthwise up its back. The rounded, leafless stem has a dense flower spike at the top.

Goosetongue

Okay, let's compare that to the poisonous arrowgrass.

Arrowgrass (top) and goosetongue (bottom)

Arrowgrass (Triglochin maritima) has fleshy leaves that are narrower and more rounded in cross section than goosetongue. Like goosetongue, arrowgrass has a leafless stalk with a flower spike at the top. Arrowgrass grows taller than goosetongue, so it is easiest to confuse the two in the springtime.

Arrowgrass leaves (top)and goosetongue leaves (bottom)

Arrowgrass (top) and goosetongue (bottom) have similar flower spikes.

A friend related to me that she was walking along the beach munching on greens one day and asked her companion, “What is this plant that tastes like bitter cilantro?” Right then her heart started to pound and she felt short of breath. She was lucky that her symptoms passed after some time. Arrowgrass can cause headaches, heart palpitations, and convulsions. It can be deadly to livestock.

Look for the ribs on the backs of the leaves and choose goosetongue.

Goosetongue leaves have ribs on the back.

Goosetongue is salty and succulent. It is very high in vitamin A, high in vitamin C, and a good source of iron. Best of all it tastes good! Goosetongue can be eaten raw, lightly steamed, sautéed, and can be preserved by pressure canning or by blanching and freezing. Munch it as a beach snack or gather some and add it to stir fries, salads, omelettes, and casseroles.

Goosetongue is best in spring and early summer. When the seed heads mature goosetongue leaves become stringy.

And that mosquito bite that you got on your neck while you were picking goosetongue? Crush a goosetongue leaf with your fingernails and apply the mash to the bug bite. Like other members of the plantain family, goosetongue will quiet the itchiness.

Goostongue is abundant in much of Southeast Alaska

Happy Foraging, Dear Ones!

Alaska Beachcomber

More foraging goodness:

Beach Asparagus, Sea Beans, Sea Asparagus

Foraging Nettles, Tasty Spring Greens

Processing and Using Nettles

Field Mint

Harvesting Bullwhip Kelp

Bullwhip Kelp Pickle Recipe

Devil's Club Sun Tea

Some of you have been writing in to ask about how to make devil's club tea. There's several ways to go about it and happily one of the easiest methods is also my favorite! Sun tea is a simple, gentle process.

Fill a jar with cool drinking water. Add several spoonfuls of dried devil's club inner bark. You can also add some dried mint at this point for flavor.

To see how to prepare devil's club bark go to Harvesting Devil's Club Root. For tea you can use the inner bark of the stalk, so you don't need to dig the root. Just be sure to wear appropriate gloves and eye protection to handle devil's club stalks! Dry the bark in a dehydrator, a barely warm oven, or on racks above the wood stove. Keep the temperature low and air moving through the bark bits.

The dried bark bits can be ground finer in a coffee grinder and then ironed into tea bags. (See Wild Tea for photos of filling tea bags.)

Give it a stir, and then set the jar out in a sunny, safe location. A jar of water can create a magnifying glass which can start a fire when the sun shines through it, so I set mine out on the metal boat deck.  The towel and pot holder are just for the photos.

Over a few hours or the course of the day the tea will become a lovely, light golden color.

Strain the tea, add flavors if you like - honey and lemon for you? - and sip a cup while relaxing. Devil's club tea has a medicinal taste. There is usually a light sheen of plant oil on the surface of devil's club tea, which is normal and not harmful. Refrigerate any remaining tea and use it up over the next couple of days.

Devil's club tea is invigorating for some people and gives a gentle lift for others. I like to have a cup to bring myself back after a long, strenuous task or if I am feeling generally wrung out.

Sun tea is a great way to make devil's club tea, but not the only way. You can make devil's club tea by pouring boiling water over the dried inner bark (an infusion), or make a decoction by simmering it. Each method creates a slightly different product.

 Devil's club is a powerful plant, and it's many sharp spines are a reminder to handle it with physical and spiritual respect in every step.

There are many articles on the medicinal qualities of devil's club: Ryan Drum, National Geographic, and Juneau Empire are a few.

Devil's club can lower blood sugar when used internally. If you have any reason to have concern there then check with your doctor.

Wishing you a sunshiny day,

Alaska Beachcomber

More posts about wilderness food and medicine:

• Field Mint
• Wild Tea
• Making Devil's Club Salve and Tincture
• Harvesting Devil's Club Root
• Bullwhip Kelp Pickle Recipe

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This information is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.  The material on this site is provided for informational purposes only and is not medical advice.