Artemisia vulgaris has been growing in disturbed ground and alongside rivers since before people thought to write about it. Native to temperate Europe, Asia, and North Africa, it naturalized across North America with the ease of a plant that asks almost nothing from a site. It grows 2 to 4 feet tall, with lobed green leaves whose woolly undersides catch the light differently from the smoother surface above. In mid-summer to early fall the stems produce loose panicles of small greenish-yellow or reddish-brown flowers — unremarkable individually, but atmospheric en masse against late-season meadow plantings. The fragrance is distinctive: aromatic, slightly bitter, the smell of old medicine cabinets and hedgerow folklore.

It spreads aggressively by rhizomes, and any fragment of root left in the soil will produce a new plant. This is not a plant to introduce carelessly. Where it is already present, management means mowing before seeds set and pulling young plants before the root system establishes. It endures poor soil, drought, and neglect with equanimity, and deer show no interest in it. Its long history of medicinal use — in teas, poultices, and traditional preparations across multiple cultures — speaks to a plant that has been paying its rent in different currencies for a very long time.