mugwort

plural mugworts

1. countableuncountableAny member of the species Artemisia vulgaris of plants native to temperate Eurasia and north Africa, traditionally used medicinally.

   Take then mugwort and everlasting and boil these three in several kinds of milk until they become red.

   1999, Robert Lacey, Danny Danziger, The Year 1000: What life was like at the turn of The First Millennium, London: Abacus, published 2000, page 128

   3 more examples

   Mugwort is with good success put among other herbs that are boiled, for women to sit over the hot decoction to draw down their courses, to help the delivery of the birth and expel the afterbirth, as also for the obstructions and inflammations of the mother.

   1653, Nicholas Culpeper, The English Physician Enlarged, Folio Society, published 2007, page 197

   Peony would keep away any kind of storms. Mugwort hung over doorways on Midsummer's Day, June 24, would keep off lightning, as St. John's-Wort would if gathered before sunrise on that day.

   1940, Rosetta E. Clarkson, Green Enchantments: The Magic Spell of Gardens, The Macmillan Company, page 258

   “I have eaten mugwort,” he told his familiar. “Soon I shall see down the well of time; our past lies there.”

   1970, Richard Carpenter, Catweazle, Harmondsworth: Puffin Books, page 88

2. countableuncountableAny of several aromatic plants of the genus Artemisia native to Eurasia, Africa, and North America.