Sweet wormwood (Artemisia annua) - seeds

A packet of Artemisia annua seeds, your choice of 5,000 or 10,000 seeds. They are among the finest seeds in the plant kingdom, barely visible to the naked eye, which explains these quantities: one gram contains tens of thousands.

Sow in spring on the surface, without covering, as light is needed for germination. Mix the seeds with fine sand to spread them out without clumping, press them onto the substrate and keep moist by misting, at 18 to 22 °C. Germination is quick, five to ten days, and often prolific.

Thin out ruthlessly: each plant needs 50 to 80 cm. Plant out after the frosts, in full sun, in ordinary, well-drained soil. It is undemanding and grows in almost anything.

From 1 to 2 m in a single season, sometimes more in deep soil, forming an airy, light, much-branched bush. The foliage, divided two or three times into very fine segments, releases its scent at the slightest touch: it is the first thing you notice when walking past. Flowering, in late summer, is a haze of tiny greenish-yellow flower heads.

It is a strict annual: it grows, flowers, sets seed and dies with the first frosts. It self-seeds easily and may reappear in numbers the following year.

Artemisinin, a molecule isolated from this species in 1972 by the Chinese chemist Tu Youyou, earned her the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2015. This molecule is used in pharmaceuticals, in purified form and at controlled doses. The whole plant is not a medicine, we do not sell it as such, and growing Artemisia annua at home has nothing to do with a medical treatment.

These seeds are sold as ornamental, aromatic and botanical collector's seeds. They are not a food product or a health product. We provide no dosage, no preparation method and no expected effect.

Do not consume the plant, and keep it out of reach of children and pets.

Do I really have to sow on the surface?
Yes. These seeds are so fine that a millimetre of compost is enough to stop them coming up. Press them down, do not bury them.

Why so many seeds per packet?
Because it is impossible to count them and their weight is tiny. 5,000 seeds fit in a thimble.

How does it differ from wormwood?
Wormwood is a perennial with silvery-grey foliage and a bitter scent. Sweet wormwood is green, annual, taller, and its scent is fresher and more lemony.

Does it self-seed too much?
It can come up in numbers the following year. Cut the stems before the seeds ripen if you want to avoid this, or let it be and thin out in spring.

Also worth exploring: sweet wormwood as a plant, wormwood, and all our seeds from around the world.