What is the origin of 'sleep tight'?
Read moreOne of the mysteries of the English language finally explained.
noun
An aromatic or bitter-tasting plant of a genus that includes wormwood, mugwort, and sagebrush. Several kinds are used in herbal medicine and many are cultivated for their feathery grey foliage.
- ‘Don't forget to factor white and blue into your planting scheme; both do a great job of cooling off and separating drifts of hot-colored plants, as do gray-foliaged plants such as santolina, artemisia, and dusty miller.’
- ‘Good foliage plants for fillers are low-growing artemisias, dusty miller, and golden, purple, or tricolor sage.’
- ‘During an archaeological dig in the 1970s, instructions for treating malaria with an herb called wormwood, or artemisia, were found in a 2,000-year-old Chinese tomb.’
- ‘Silver-leafed artemisia varieties, lamb's ears and herbs, such as lavender, contribute grayish-silver foliage that are both handsome and aromatic.’
- ‘Plants with leaves adapted to coping in hotter climes, the likes of rosemary, lavender, artemisias and Convolvulus cneorum, will have to be planted in well-drained soils if they are not to suffer from waterlogging in wet winters.’
Origin
Middle English: via Latin from Greek, ‘wormwood’, named after the goddess Artemis, to whom it was sacred.
