California mugwort

Burning epigastric pain with a sluggish, gassy digestion in a person who runs cold and craves warm drinks.

The hiker who has brushed poison oak: fresh crushed leaf rubbed on the skin at once, before the rash sets in.

Scanty, delayed periods with cramping in a tense woman who sleeps poorly and remembers no dreams.

Overview. California mugwort is a tall, silver-backed Artemisia of streambanks and moist ground from Washington to Baja California and east to Nevada, and it has naturalized in parts of Argentina where it is known as matico and taken for stomach ulcers. The leafy tops are the medicine. It was one of the most important plants of the Indigenous peoples of California, used for women's complaints, digestive upset, colds, rheumatism and poison oak, burned as a cleansing smoke, and placed under the pillow for dreams; Western herbalists use it much as Artemisia vulgaris.

Clinical Notes. Treat this plant as the West Coast mugwort and reach for it where you would use Artemisia vulgaris, with the bonus of a well-characterized gastroprotective sesquiterpene lactone. As a bitter it wakes a cold, sluggish digestion, eases cramping and wind, and in Argentine folk practice a weak tea is taken before meals for ulcer pain; that use has laboratory support and makes it a reasonable adjunct in gastritis, alongside conventional eradication therapy when H.