Unkempt, unshowy, shabby and unruly, mugwort isn’t a flower that features very often on the covers of glossy gardening magazines, nor at horticultural shows.
Rather it thrives where plants need no permission: wasteground, car-park edges and little-used railway tracks. Reaching a couple of metres tall, come September these towers of billowing fronds are toppling into untidy heaps. Their frail white-grey flowers, which never properly open, disintegrate into ash-like crumbs – hard to believe it’s a member of the sunflower family.