Wormwood is good for making absinthe... and the fighting garden pests is a myth, if you don't believe me, I will post a pic of my wormwood covered with aphids.
I gave up on it...
For you, you will have to treat it almost like a cactus... it likes full sun and little water.

thx for that info, it also apears to have no effect on slugs as a load of seedslings next to the plant got munched by slugs (the bane of my life, odly enough the seedlings were henbane)

i still don't know if absinthe is illegal in the UK cos i thought it was but hear that the law had been overturned and have found shops that sell it.

to make absinthe i would need to do some distilling and thats illegal so i wont... *shifty eyes*
hey, look over there...

Where? :o) There are recipes that don't involve soldering copper...BUT, I keep saying this, don't include lemon balm or you will have your friends sleeping on your driveway, like I did! :o) Looked like a driveby had happened! :o)

http://www.naturedirect2u.com/Medicinal%20herbs/motherofthymeherb.htm

I guess, according to Grieve, it is the same as Thymus vulgaris...

http://www.botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/t/thygar16.html

i forgot to check botanical.com, hmm thanks for that, my mum suffers from something that sounds like gastric fermentation, i.e. when she eats wheat flour, especialy refined white wheat flour she get terrible bloating, to the point when you can see a difference in her stomache, and she always sed it seems to kindof ferment in her stomache.

maby i should keep some thyme on standby as she does love bread but can't eat it.

thx

If absynthe is no longer illegal, it should be. It used to cause nerve damage which caused users to have a characteristically unsteady gait, among other things. Possibly, if it is now sold, they have discovered how to extract the harmful substance.

Wormwood is, however, still used in a well-known horse linamint in the USA. I use it occasionally, for joint pain. Despite my suspicions of its long-term effects, I find it preferable to experimenting with the nightshades or aconitums for the same purpose. For muscle relaxation, sage (preferably clary, which, they say, is less apt to cause seizures) is more helpful anyway. I would recommend the younger members of the realm save such substances for experimentation in their latter years, when their ability to bear children or live a long and healthy life is no longer an issue....after all, you have to save up some fun things to do in your dotage!

I didn't realize thyme was so useful; will have to dig up my herb books again...

thx eibren, that is indeed some sage advice.

unfortunately the dangerous part of wormwood is as far as i know the bit that is important for making it actualy absinthe.

but thujone (the active alcoloid) is also found in sage aparently as well as another herb i'm sure i saw yesterday.

the thing about absinthe now is that the alcohol percentage is very high so you die of alcohol poisoning before you die of thujone OD, nice.

there is also a legal limit on the amount of wormwood you can put in it i think.

the advantage i can see in using nightshades as ointments is that they are so redily absorbed through the skin. though that means you should be very careful when weeding out anoying bittersweet (woody nightshade). or any other solanaceae (i am including potatos and tomatos).

well i am rambling and shall stop now.

Bittersweet seeded itself in the front of my garden. I took it as a Sign....For some reason, I have always been rather fond of that plant, and have been hesitant to weed it out....It can kill livestock that eat it, though....

If anyone else has ever used it externally, I would be interested in any observations....

{{gwi:61430}}
^The Green Fairy from Moulin Rogue^

We had a great thread last year on Absinthe. Here's a search link, the first few sites were so good, I couldn't single one out...
Enjoy! lynn

Here is a link that might be useful: Google, Green Fairy

Most artemisias are good for "women's" problems in particular. Often used around menstural times. And I think? menopause. :)

realy? hmm with any medical uses i'd prefere to use a slightly sfe relative such as mugwort which grows in abundance here :)

talk about irony, i have a friends who once drunk absinthe, he's not incredibly educated and if u refered to it as le fee vert he would just look at you puzzled, but he started hallucinating that the bottle was a green fairy of all things. lol
other people with him werent too pleased as he hen procedded to punch the "fairy" destroying the bottle and about £30 worth of absinthe left in the bottle.

oh and eiberin, i wouldn't lke to hear from antyone who used internaly except in ery small amounts as it will probably cause gastric pain, or death.

i have a friend who took hemlock once. she knew what she was doing roughly being quite well versed in herblore as it is. she mixed a little of the juice with sugar and ate it.
she had amazing vivid and wierd dreams, and vicious stomache cramps. while different families of plants i'd be wary of using it anything otehr than externaly, i'm wary of using it externaly even. unfortunately to talk to ost people who'd taken it internaly i would expect you'd need a ouija board.or to cross the border yourself, either temprarily or permanently. course i could be wrong but bittersweet contains the alcaloid ducetine ( i think thats its name, some thing like that. after all its Solanum dulcamara) as well as the normal tropane alcaloids of solanaceae which would coomplimate matters.

well i'f i'm comp;letely wrong discard this and tell me. but i do know more about the nightshades than is healthy.