Artemisia absinthium is a species of wormwood, native to temperate regions of Eurasia and northern Africa. The medical use of the wormwood plant Artemisia absinthium L.

It is a herbaceous, perennial plant with fibrous roots. The stems are straight, growing to 0.8-1.2 m (rarely 1.5 m, but, sometimes even larger) tall, grooved, branched, and silvery-green. The leaves are spirally arranged, greenish-grey above and white below, covered with silky silvery-white trichomes, and bearing minute oil-producing glands; the basal leaves are up to 25 cm long, bipinnate to tripinnate with long petioles, with the cauline leaves (those on the stem) smaller, 5–10 cm long, less divided, and with short petioles; the uppermost leaves can be both simple and sessile (without a petiole). Its flowers are pale yellow, tubular, and clustered in spherical bent-down heads (capitula), which are in turn clustered in leafy and branched panicles.