Capillary wormwood is an Asian wormwood whose leaves are split into hair-thin, silky segments that give the whole plant a silvery look. It grows on sandy riverbanks and seashores across much of Asia, including China, Korea, and Japan. It's best known as yin chen, a traditional Chinese medicinal herb.
Appearance
- Growth form
- A perennial (sometimes biennial) herb about 1–3 ft (30–100 cm) tall with a woody base and slender purplish or reddish-brown stems.
- Leaves
- Leaves are divided into thread-like segments covered in silky hairs. Young plants start as a flat .
- Flowers
- Tiny yellowish flower heads in a large, branching cluster, appearing in late summer and fall in East Asia.
- Fruit
- Tiny brown seeds about 1/32 in (0.8 mm) long.
Where it lives
- Typical habitats
- Sandy riverbanks
- Sandy seashores
- Range
- Native to Pakistan, the western Himalayas, China, Mongolia, Korea, parts of Russia, and Japan; introduced in Afghanistan, India, Nepal, Southeast Asia, and Taiwan.
- Preferred conditions
- Likes dry, sunny, sandy or gravelly ground that gets scoured by floods now and then.
Conservation
- IUCN Red List
- NENot EvaluatedNot yet assessed
Culture and stories
- Culture and stories
- In traditional Chinese medicine it is called yin chen hao and has long been used for jaundice and liver complaints. A similar wormwood, Artemisia scoparia, is sometimes used the same way.
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