Mugwort is a pesky plant with an equally displeasing name. It has become an excessively problematic plant in Tennessee and Georgia in recent years where it is currently considered an invasive plant. Mugwort grows from rhizomes that are extremely hardy and readily productive. Mugwort releases seeds in late summer in warm regions like the Southeast, which creates double trouble for those wishing to stop its rampant growth.
Invasive plants are becoming more of a hot topic than ever before. Most invasive species arrived in the U.S. under innocent circumstances. Mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris) came to the U.S. from Europe or Asia as a perennial herb that debatably has a number of health benefits. In its native environment, mugwort was most likely prone to disease and environmental conditions that prevented it from overtaking other plants.
Like other invasive species though, mugwort has no natural predators in its new environment. Sometimes a plant that is removed from one ecosystem into a new one is capable of outcompeting the native plants for nutrients in the soil, or for sunlight, or for other necessities for a plant’s success. This is the case for the mugwort plant.
How to Identify Mugwort
Mugwort is also known as false chrysanthemum. As the name implies, the foliage of the mugwort looks strikingly similar to that of the chrysanthemum. The leaves smell similar to those of the chrysanthemum, too. However, mugwort is simply a cleverly disguised weed that is sneaking into gardens everywhere.
Mugwort is worth adding to your list of most unwanted vegetation. And, it is an important plant to identify as it begins to invade other regions. You’ll want to know this one when you see it. Here is a link with some excellent images to help you identify mugwort.
How to Control Mugwort
Some invasive plants, like English ivy for example, are planted for a reason. Gardeners like the appearance and behavior of English ivy, and it is readily available to purchase. Research concerning how to control and eradicate it has been conducted. Mugwort, on the other hand, is sort the new kid on the block that no one really knows anything about.
Mugwort is not a plant that a typical gardener would plant purposefully. The spread of mugwort occurs when a gardener purchases a plant that has been extracted from the ground where a mugwort rhizome may have inadvertently been collected, too. So, research on how to control and eradicate this pest is preliminary.
One thing known is that the rhizomes are very hardy and they will produce a new plant from a very small piece. Don’t try to chop the rhizome up. Herbicidal treatment for weeds is recommended. However, your ornamental plant that you purchased with the sneaky mugwort on the side may not withstand the herbicidal weed treatments. The decision may be a difficult one if you already have a mugwort in your midst.
If you have not been exposed to a mugwort in your landscape yet, the job for you as a conscientious gardener is to be aware of this plant and to be able to recognize it. Once you can identify it, be careful not to introduce one into your own garden. If you do, it will likely spread from the garden into your yard and right out into your neighborhood and beyond.
Invasive Plant Awareness
Spread the news about mugwort and other invasive plants before these plants spread themselves into your region. Be aware of what plants are considered dangerous in your area. Share that information and knowledge with your neighbors and fellow gardeners.
Organize a community group dedicated to education concerning what plant varieties pose a threat to the native plants. Encourage your community to avoid garden centers or nurseries that sell plants known to cause harm to the local ecosystem. And finally, contact your local extension office to learn more about how you can help tackle the issue of invasive plants.
Want to learn more about invasive mugwort?
See these resources:
Mugwort Management from University of Tennessee Department of Plant Sciences
Managing Mugwort In Field Nurseries With Cultivation And Herbicides from Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk County
Creative Commons Flickr photo courtesy of Mrs. Gemstone
My flower garden has become infected with mugwort. I am elderly and unable to do a lot I sprayed and killed the top but then the roots flourished again . I used Brushtox to spray which is lethal to other invasives. What can I do to get those roots to be gone forever?
You don’t. It can’t be done! It has spread into New England, and nothing I do has slowed its spread in my yard and all my flower and vegetable gardens!
I’m in CT and I have to agree… it’s been a BATTLE and I’m not winning.
I have found some small relief. I put down thick landscape fabric over it. It started growing at the edges of the fabric. I hit it with a squirt of vinegar at least once a week and it turns brown within hours. It does start to grow back in some spots about 5 days after I “vinegar” it. I keep hoping that eventually it will give up!
You guys are so silly fussing around and trying to kill a beautiful plant that has a plan of its own. Mugwort is King!!!! Mugwort is the King of Medicine!!!! Mugwort is here to Stay!!!! Muhahahahahahaha!!!!
Good come collect all you wish from my gardens!!!!!
Your delirious rant suggests that you have invested heroic effort in the attempt to defeat this invader.
No, I actually have to agree with this person. Take that mugwort and boil it, or make a balm out of it so you can treat joint pain. Mugwort also helps you sleep and has a TON of metaphysical properties.
STOP KILLING MEDICINE MOTHER NATURE OUT HERE FOR US TO BENEFIT FROM!
Mugwort is king!
I love you
The best thing you can do is make peace with this beneficial plant and learn how to love it and live with it. Do your research first about Artemesia Vulgaris or (Mugwort) as they call it.
I guess you haven’t lost multiple established perennial beds from it. Or a 15yo asparagus bed. Mugwort is the cancer of the horticultural world.
I purchased a Halo Dogwood from a garden center that had some sort of leafy growth in the soil of the container. I picked the weed out and planted the Dogwood and suddenly that weed was al through my garden – it was quite aggressive. It’s mugwort (looks like chrysanthemum leaves) and I still have it today despite weeding. I pick it out constantly. I just planted hosta over it, hoping to deprive it of sunlight and diminish its growth.
Mugwort is rife throughout my flower garden. Last autumn, I hacked a dense mini-forest of mugwort down to the soil. This spring, literally thousands of mugwort sprouts, ranging from 1/2″ to two feet, smother the garden.
Every day, I confront interminable plucking. The stubs of the hacked weeds from last year now sprout shoots, and some of their rhizomes extend through through the dirt to create new mugwort. A rainy day followed by sunshine results in myriad mugwort sprouts, and they soon intertwine with the garden’s flowers.
The nearest analogy to the unstoppable spread of this weed is the movie “Alien.” No matter how many you wipe out, more keep coming.
I have found that cutting it off below grade with a weed v shaped cutter doesn’t do it, Roundup won’t do it, it just kills the sprayed sprout. With either or, it will sprout up again near the killed sprout. It seems like the weed has a rooting area of 5 to 10 feet in diameter.
So, I am just trying a broad leaf weed killer. Going after it every 2 weeks seems to be necessary. I am making some progress. Some still pop up, It may take me 2 years or more to get rid of it.
Is there a particular “broad leaf” killer you use?
really un-useful article on how to get rid of it.
There is no useful article because no one has found a way to get rid of it. Rutgers has a schedule for spraying clopyralid to control it for farming. Control is the operative word. I’ve read studies done by universities and towns trying to rid fields of this scourge. In my yard, setting it on fire, fairly regularly, has had the best success. I don’t like the poison (especially since runoff goes directly into a river) and we already know it won’t kill it. Vinegar kills the leaves we see, but I can trace the roots it sends outward to avoid the vinegar. This year, I will pick a spot and spray vinegar in a circle decreasing in size each time I spray, hoping it finds no where to go. Presently, it is grown through 2 layers of cardboard covered by about 6” of wood chips. Neither the bind weed nor the Canada Thistle was much deterred my cardboard and wood chips. Cotton insulation (2” felt) keeps down thistle but not the mugwort and not the bindweed. No one can use enough mugwort for making beers/meads or for making home remedies to justify keeping a plant that is overrunning native plants and food crops.
The trouble with these plants that spread via rhizomes is that they’re getting their nutrients from the rhizome. So I am not surprised that smothering it doesn’t work. I too live in CT. Mugwort makes goldenrod’s rhizomes look well-mannered. It is now enemy No. 1, behind the 3 Bs: bittersweet, bindweed and bamboo. Like pruning a rosebush I feel that digging it up just makes it grow more. Sorcerer’s apprentice is an apt metaphor. But plucking the shoots that pop up from the soil is as useless as cutting bamboo verticals. I hope someone finds an answer soon, otherwise mugwort rules the world.
LOL! Yeah, this gist is, “Its umpossible!”
We have gone to war for 5 years…and nothing. Last year I finally pulled in the big guns and used an all vegetation killer. It was successful for the entire season, albeit the flower beds were barren. Thought this year we’d have a “clean slate”. Think again. Both beds full of new sprouts…I could pull them, but they’ll just be back in a week. Nothing works and I’ve had enough. I concede defeat and have decided to allow mother nature to do as she sees fit. When we are ready to sell in a few years I’ll just pray the folks buying have a lot of love for mugwort.
This is not what Mother Nature intended. This is a species from another part of the world with natural controls introduced by humans to the US, where apparently there are no natural controls. Uncontrolled native species squelch out native plants and cause environmental disruption.
I’ve been going up against it for 30 years, and last year I took the year off gardening. This spring it was everywhere again. I just cleaned out (yeah, right) two garden bed areas, removing as many rhizomes as I could find. It WILL come back in those areas! I look south toward what used to be the rest of my garden beds – pure Wormwood, or close to it. The only thing I can think of is to build actual RAISED beds, up on stilts, using barrel halves to hold the soil out of the invader’s reach, and to mow the little suckers down over and over all summer. I really need to bite the bullet and just give up on that area for the foreseeable future.