Artemisia argyi （silvery wormwood）
Every Dragon Boat Festival, there will be delicious rice dumplings and a dragon boat race. I wonder if you have noticed that during the Dragon Boat Festival, there are often a bunch of plants in front of the door of every house? The branches with waxy oval leaves are banyan trees, the pointed leaves are calamus, and those that look a bit like chrysanthemum leaves are silvery wormwood (Artemisia argyi).
Silvery wormwood is a perennial herb belonging to the genus Artemisia of the Compositae, widely distributed in Asia, North and South America, Oceania and China. In Taiwan, in addition to silvery wormwood, there is also wild wormwood (Artemisia indica Willd, also called May wormwood), which is widely distributed in the plains and the sunny open areas of mountainous areas at low to high altitudes of the island. The fragrance of wild wormwood is similar to that of silvery wormwood and the efficacy is similar so both are used in Taiwan. Common Chinese pharmacies and traditional Chinese medicine prescriptions are silvery wormwood, and wild wormwood is widely used in food. In addition to silvery wormwood and wild wormwood, you can also see Crossostephium chinense (L.) Makino （蘄艾）. The leaves of C. chinense are gray, and only the lower surface of the leaves of silvery wormwood and wild wormwood is gray. You can tell that they are different at first glance; however, silvery wormwood and wild wormwood are not easy to distinguish. Roughly speaking, the stature of wild wormwood is shorter; however, if you see one of them separately, it may not be easy to distinguish it without looking at the illustrated guide book.
The leaves of silvery wormwood are rich in essential oils, and you can smell its aroma by rubbing leaves gently. Generally, the leaves are picked and dried before blooming in summer to stop bleeding and reduce fever. Taiwan’s aborigines use crushed wild wormwood and ginger to treat headaches, and decoction of leaves to treat eye diseases. In ancient times, people believed that aged dried wormwood was better to be used to cure the disease. Therefore, Mencius said “seven years of disease need three years old of silvery wormwood” to describe the problem is very serious and difficult to solve.
Whether it is silvery wormwood or wild wormwood, because it is widely distributed, people have learned to use them very early. The Classic of Poetry mentions “There he is gathering the wormwood! A day without seeing him, Is like three years!”, and Li Sao mentions silvery wormwood many times. Because the silvery wormwood and wild wormwood plants are strong and easy to survive, they are often used as a metaphor for despised characters in literature. For this reason, in the idiom, there is “orchid and wormwood burns together” to mean that all good and bad will die together; another “orchid and wormwood is inseparable” is used to describe a situation where good and bad are difficult to distinguish.
In addition to being used as an internal medicine, silvery wormwood is an indispensable tool in moxibustion. The leaves of silvery wormwood are dried into moxa, and burned on the skin close to the acupoints through the cardboard. This is one of the most important treatment methods in Chinese medicine. Why did our ancestors think of using silvery wormwood for moxibustion? According to researcher Li Jianmin from the Institute of History and Language of the Academia Sinica, it may be inspired by oracle bone divination. In ancient times, people’s fortune-telling was to put dried silvery wormwood in small balls on the tortoise shell and burn it. After the tortoise shell cracked, the direction and depth of the crack were used to predict good and bad luck; perhaps at this time, someone observed that the shape of the crack resembled the veins on the skin, so moxibustion was born. The earliest medical book “The Mawangdui Silk Texts Fifty Two Prescriptions for Diseases” also only mentioned moxibustion, which indirectly supported the development of moxibustion earlier than acupuncture. What’s interesting is that the Saidiq and Taroko tribes of the aborigines in Taiwan also use dried silvery wormwood as a tinder, so although the ethnic groups are different, the tools they use are actually the same!
Because dried silvery wormwood can be burned by refracting the heat generated by the sun with a lens or a concave mirror in ancient times, the fire of silvery wormwood became the incarnation of “sky fire”; therefore, silvery wormwood was considered to be able to eliminate ominous magic. As for when silvery wormwood becomes one of the sacred plants for the Dragon Boat Festival? The earliest record appeared in “Jingchu Suishiji” in the sixth century AD: “May 5… picking silvery wormwood and shape it as a person. Hanging on the door to ward off ominous air… Today, we shape silvery wormwood in the shape of a tiger. Or trim it as a little tiger and wear it.”. In other words, since the sixth century at the latest, people have worn small objects made of silvery wormwood on the Dragon Boat Festival to expel ominous air.
In addition to moxibustion and medicinal use of wormwood, the Hakka “zhulongzhu” and the Taiwanese “cao zi kueh” also add wild wormwood to increase the aroma; whether it is the zhulongzhu or Cao Zi Kueh is made by kneading glutinous rice flour into the outer skin and filling the stuffing (dried radish or shredded radish, etc.) and steamed. Hakka villagers make wormwood dumplings around the Ching Ming Festival and add wormwood to their skins, so they are also called “Ai kueh.” In the early Ching Ming Festival, Ai kueh is a must in Hakka villages. In addition to the addition of wild wormwood, there is also a version with shǔqúcǎo（Pseudognaphalium affine）. Like silvery wormwood and wild wormwood, shǔqúcǎo also belongs to the Compositae family and have a special fragrance. They are also very popular for making cao zi kueh. In ancient times, shǔqúcǎo grew on the corners of the house, and was also called “house corner grass”. Therefore, when I was a child, I also heard the elders call the cao zi kueh “house corner kueh”. I often wondered why such a delicious food is called “house corner kueh”…can it be only made in the corner of the house?
