Sweet Wormwood

Artemesia annua Origin: China Improvement status: Cultivated wild material Seeds per packet: ~1,200 Germination tested 08/2024: 90% Life cycle: Annual Also known as "sweet annie," "qing hao," "sweet absinthe," "sweet sagewort," or "annual mugwort," sweet wormwood is a powerfully medicinal herb long utilized in traditional Chinese medicine, particularly to combat fevers. In the 1970s, Chinese scientist Tu Youyou first isolated a compound from sweet wormwood called artemisinin which showed great promise as a treatment for malaria. In 2015 she shared a Nobel Prize for Medicine based on that work, becoming the first woman from mainland China to win the prize. Her groundbreaking work with herbs used in traditional Chinese medicine was funded by the Chinese military's Project 523, an effort spurred on by Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh to bring hundreds of scientists together to figure out how to deal with malaria, which was one of the biggest threats to soldiers during the Vietnam War. Two me