Artemisia absinthium
Otherwise known as wormwood.
"And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters,
And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.
The Book of Revelation
I always believed that Chernobyl was the Russian word for wormwood, which has a certain poetic resonance given the passage above, but Wikipedia disputes that, saying it is the Ukrainian word for mudwort, a related plant.
Wormwood is a flavouring of the notorious spirit, absinthe.
That venomous green, the little glasses, the special filigreed spoons to add the sugar with.
So decadent, so bohemian, so delightful.
La fee verte, the Green Fairy.
I've recently discovered that absinthe has been made legal again. It only took almost a hundred years for the hysteria to wear off. Apparently it isn't an hallucogenic, which is mildly disappointing.
But the price is outrageous, probably because of the very high alcohol content.
Good news: I'm to receive a bottle as a birthday present.
Will it prove my downfall, like this poor lass? Only time will tell.
1876. Edgar Degas
There are a surprising number of pictures called The Absinthe Drinker. To wit:
Pablo Picasso 1901
And,
Viktor Oliva c 1903
On a more mundane note, wormwood is has highly aromatic leaves which ward off a great number of garden pests (including cabbage-butterfly, aphids, slugs and snails.) So it's very useful in companion planting. But beware: the roots give off toxic emanations that will harm other plants so it has to be located a little apart from them.
Wormwood used to be strewn around as a general insecticide, and was taken internally a tonic and for worms. It can cause convulsions though if strong enough so don't go there.
With such a dark and romantic history the plant itself is quite ordinary looking:
