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WEBSITE TEXT OVERVIEW:

Title: Mugwort and Friends, Part 1

Subtitle: Harvest and cook with mugwort!

Location: Naval Cemetery Landscape

Hosted By: Yun Hai and Field Meridians

About Facilitators:

Yun Hai 雲海 offers a selection of premium ingredients for Taiwanese and Chinese cooking. We source directly from artisans, farms, and soy sauce breweries in Taiwan. Terrain, technique, history, and humanity come together in the traditional foods we distribute.

Field Meridians is an artist collective committed to creating tools for ecological resilience through social practice. With site-specific programming, publishing, and radio broadcast, Field Meridians engages the Crown Heights community to lay the foundations for food sovereignty and infrastructures of repair in the heart of Brooklyn.

The Naval Cemetery Landscape (NCL) is the site of the former Naval Hospital Cemetery at the Brooklyn Navy Yard has a memorial landscape and a native plant meadow and pollinator habitat, Mugwort will be harvested at the NCL which is fully operated and made open as a public space by Brooklyn Greenway Initiative (BGI) through the generosity of supporters. Stop by and enjoy the NCL’s native pollinator habitat and contemplative memorial urban meadow and learn about the NCL and the Greenway and what goes into maintaining their beauty and accessibility for everyone! You can see other events on our instagram: navalcemeterylandscape and at BGI’s events page.  

Objective: Mugwort is for dreaming. This rhizomatic, perennial is a persistent and common “weed” found across North America. Called the "mother of herbs," it is also used across different cultures for medicinal, spiritual and culinary purposes. Join us for a mugwort harvest and plant walk at the Naval Cemetery Landscape (NCL), a public space built and maintained by Brooklyn Greenway Initiative (BGI).

We’ll learn more about mugwort and its ecological considerations from an NCL gardener, receive training to harvest the plant, and then prepare some of it to dry for our June Taiwanese Dragon Boat decorations, and some to cook and eat on site.

What’s Included:

What to Bring:

INTRODUCTION 

About Mugwort (Avvah Rossi, Brooklyn Greenway Initiative)

Artemisia vulgaris (that’s the botanical latin and therefore the international, universal name for the mugwort most commonly found in our area and the one we will be harvesting and using in these workshops) is considered an invasive plant.  Not all plants that are non-native are invasive, and what contributes to meeting the definition of invasive is a tendency to displace so many other species that the plant threatens the biodiversity and ecology of a landscape it has been introduced to.  

In mugwort’s case, this is done through vigorous rhizomatous growth (in this case relatively shallow roots that spread quickly) that send new growth up to form a colony that overtakes other species.  Mugwort also starts growing earlier and grows taller faster than many natives, thus shading out and taking an important resource from other species: sunlight. The fragile roots break easily and even a 2 cm root fragment left in the soil can regenerate a new plant.  This plant will be genetically identical to the plant the root came from, and it is this clonal regeneration (as opposed to vegetative, which would be through seed) that accounts for most of the spread and new introductions of this species. A mugwort seed can germinate if the soil is bare on which it lands, but most often root fragments in soil or plant movement, or a neighboring colony “jumping the fence” (or more accurately going under it with spreading roots) are how this plant finds a place in your local park or your yard.

If you are very persistent and careful in weeding an area with a very small patch of mugwort, you may be able to eliminate the plant from a bed where it has recently been introduced.  For gardeners, I recommend scouting for mugwort in potted plants at nurseries, not buying the potted plants or trees when you spot mugwort hitching a ride and even leaving new potted plants that you have bought in the pots for a bit (while watering) to see if any mugwort starts to grow.  If so, carefully remove all of the mugwort roots before planting.

At the Naval Cemetery Landscape, a native plant meadow installed on a site which was formerly a near-monoculture of mugwort for years, our goal is not complete eradication (as the root system of this plant makes this an impossibility).  Instead, our gardeners’ aim is to remove all photosynthesizing parts of the plant. This includes the entire stem because if it’s green that means it is photosynthesizing, or making energy for the plant; so we either pull the growth and remove all the stem and some (but not all) of the root, or later in the season if working on a patch that has a slightly tougher stem, we will cut this at ground level).  By doing this we help the native species by exposing them to more light, weakening slightly the strength of the mugwort (although it will return) and giving the desired plants more of a chance to establish themselves and spread.  We remove every mugwort stem as we work through an area-however small.  Anything left will immediately help to send more energy reserves to the root system left behind.  We also make sure to remove the mugwort leaves and stems from the area, as mugwort has allelopathic qualities which mean its foliage and stems will leak chemicals as they break down that inhibit other species from growing, particularly plants in the Fabaceae or bean family.

If you’re at a public garden foraging, I highly recommend that you approach the gardener and ask if it’s okay for you to harvest mugwort.  They may have an area where you can work on this and benefit yourself and the garden by helping remove or limit the vigorous spring growth of this plant with the techniques you learn today.  Wherever you are working: never step where you cannot see what is under or mixed in with the mugwort!  At this time of year, mugwort may be 12 to 18 inches or higher, but other species, for example a milkweed plant (the host plant of the monarch butterfly) may only be 1-4 inches out of the soil at this time, especially if initial growth is limited by mugwort, and can be destroyed by a careless step.  If you’re harvesting in New York City’s parks and gardens: the same rule goes for your hands.  Never put your hand where you can’t see what’s under the foliage!  You might pull the wrong plant and you might also discover something hazardous that has been discarded or dropped in the growth.  As a city gardener, I always recommend wearing gloves.

Always make sure you have identified the right plant to harvest.  Other plants, such as common ragweed, may look like mugwort to the untrained eye and they may be growing side by side.  Depending on your plant ID skills and familiarity you may want to forage with the help of a guide or a group that can help you identify the right plants.

For more information on mugwort and other invasive species in our area, check out https://nyis.info/ 

For more information on the mugwort and informative horticultural bios on this and other species, I recommend the Missouri Botanical Garden’s Plant Finder.  Their page on Artemisia vulgaris is here.

Mugwort in Taiwan (Lisa Cheng Smith, Yun Hai)

Part of the work that Lisa does is meet people that Yun Hai represents and talk with them to learn more about Tawianese food. A lot of Taiwanese food that makes it out of Taiwan into the US consciousness of what Taiwanese food is are more recent recipes. For example, beef noodle soup is a product of US foreign aid which sent beef and flour to Taiwan, or gua-ba, which uses wheat for the bun.

There are many traditional agricultural practices that relate to preparing food as medicine that abound in the Taiwanese countryside. For example, the Dragon Boat Festival, a summer holiday for the Chinese diaspora, is a holiday known for its zongzi, a sticky rice dumpling wrapped in bamboo leaves. The lesser known thing that happens during the festival is that mugwort and other herbs are used to make all kinds of things including a traditional decoration that is hung on the door as a communication and celebration of the season.

It’s also appropriate that we’re in a cemetery landscape because in March, a holiday called Qing Ming Jie 清明节, or Tomb Sweeping Festival, coincides with the arrival of Spring where families visit their ancestors. Whether it's a shrine, tomb, or grave, they leave an offering, often of food. There’s a specific kind of dumpling made during Qing Ming Jie, called chhau-a-kuih 草仔粿, a mugwort rice dumpling. It uses young mugwort that can be harvested in Spring in Taiwan by macerating it, mixing it into sticky rice dough, to make these bright green, beautiful dumplings. They’re stuffed with red bean or a savory version with ground meat, dried shrimp, mushrooms, and shallots.

This year, we really wanted to have these a-kuihs, and I looked at Korean mugwort powder but it wasn’t quite right. The short story is that I ended up going to Tangram Mall in Flushing and at the food court pop-up I saw the mugwort dumpling made from a local vendor named Vinci. We became friends and I was able to offer her mugwort dumplings through the store. When I went to go pick it up, I asked her where she gets the mugwort and she said she forages it a year earlier out in Kissena Park and Cunningham Park in Flushing, and really all over Queens.

Mugwort is considered an invasive species here and I like that people are recreating traditional food ways by foraging out in the fields in Queens. It taught me not only about the ecology of mugwort, but how these ecologies in the city also need to include humans. Humans operate in these landscapes, determining what they look like.

Mugwort has a lot of properties that make it appropriate to Taiwan. For example, it is used at this time of year to ward off insects. These herb sachets have a practical use for human health and wellness. The last time I was in Taiwan was during the Spring and mugwort products abound. People were even messaging me about introducing me to a mugwort farmer! People use mugwort in every day products like toothpaste, tea, insect repellent, food soaks, bath salts, and soap. It is revered as a pharmaceutical and beauty product.

Mugwort is part of the genus Artemisia, which comes from Artemis, the Greek goddess of hunting and childbirth. It is really useful in women’s reproductive health and childbirth. It is used in traditional Chinese medicine for women’s health because it generates blood flow around the uterus. It is also used in moxibustion, a process that draws toxins out of the body. Using dried and fermented mugwort, a practitioner then places a small cylinder of the moxa on specific pressure points in the body to generate heat. The aroma also has a stimulating effect.  

Yun Hai stands for Taiwan itself. We stand for Taiwan as a nation and place with the right to determine its own sovereignty. We want to communicate that and to help people make up their mind about Taiwan through culture, food, agriculture.

Mugwort Pajeon Recipe

Insa pajeon recipe 🌿 courtesy of Yong Shin via Kimberly Chou

For the Batter:

Wash and pick tender leaves from the mugwort.

Slice green onions.

Slice red bell pepper.

Prepare batter by mixing all ingredients until lumps disappear. Add the mugwort, onion, and bell pepper.

On a hot pan, add a tablespoon of oil. Cook halfway – you will see the pancake “set” and change color along the perimeter. Flip when bubbly, and cook through on the other side.

Serve with dipping sauce of your choice (LinYee likes a 1:1:1 ratio of soy sauce, sesame oil, rice wine vinegar with a dash of sugar)

You can also use a store-bought version like the one to the left. I prefer a mix that includes potato starch and/or tapioca flour to give the pancakes a little extra chewiness.