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12(1): Medicinal and poisonous plants 1

Artemisia annua L.

This article should be read together with the article on the genus: Artemisia in the Handbook volume indicated above in this database.

Sp. pl. 2: 847 (1753).

Sweet wormwood (Am). Vietnam: thanh hao, thanh hao hoa v[af]ng, ng[air] si.

Eastern Europe to India, Indo-China, China and Taiwan, naturalized in Japan and North America, sometimes as an adventive plant in western Europe; locally cultivated as an ornamental in Java, but on a larger scale for medicinal purposes in Vietnam and China.

An extract is highly valued as a cure for malaria; the isolated active compound (artemisinin) is the basis for commercially traded medicaments. The plant is also used in folk medicine to treat jaundice and anorexia. The seeds are used in China to treat flatulence, dyspepsia and tuberculosis, and plants in the bud stage in China and Indo-China as febrifuge and to treat boils and skin diseases.

An annual branched herb up to 150 cm tall (in cultivation sometimes up to 300 cm tall) with ribbed stem; leaves bipinnatifid or tripinnatifid, up to 12 cm long, with linear, 0.3-1 mm wide pectinately dentate segments, glabrous; heads in rather large panicles, 1.5-2.5 mm long, central flowers bisexual, corolla yellowish; fruit obovoid, 0.6-1 mm long and glabrous. Artemisia annua is locally a common weed on waste grounds and in fields. It is reported that only plants from southern China (Sichuan Province) and northern Vietnam contain abundant artemisinin. This intra-specific variation ranges up to a ten-fold higher artemisinin content compared to plants from other regions.

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Nguyen Tien Ban, Vu Xuan Phuong & Charles B. Lugt

Nguyen Tien Ban, Vu Xuan Phuong & Lugt, C.B., 1999. Artemisia annua L.. In: de Padua, L.S., Bunyapraphatsara, N. and Lemmens, R.H.M.J. (Editors): Plant Resources of South-East Asia No 12(1): Medicinal and poisonous plants 1. PROSEA Foundation, Bogor, Indonesia. Database record: prota4u.org/prosea