The Wormseed Plant.
Absinthium santonicum.
Also see: The Wormseed Plant - Common Wormwood - Sea Wormwood - Roman Wormwood.
A kind of wormwood, native of the East, and not known so much as in our gardens. The plant is two feet high. The leaves are very finely divided, like those of the true Roman wormwood, and of a pale green on the upper side, and a silvery white below. The stalks are stiff, firm, woody, and branched; they are of a whitish colour, and have a loose downy skin upon them: the flowers are small and brownish; they resemble those of wormwood, and stand in a kind of loose spikes at the tops of the stalks.
The seeds are used: our druggists keep them; and very often the unripe buds of the flowers in their place, are mixed with them. They are good against worms in children; the good women give them mixed with treacle: and few medicines for this purpose have better effect. For people of nicer palates, they may be powdered, and made into boluses.
