Artemisia annua

Artemisia annua, also known as sweet wormwood, sweet annie, sweet sagewort, annual mugwort or annual wormwood, is a common type of wormwood native to temperate Asia, but naturalized in many countries including scattered parts of North America.

An extract of A. annua, called artemisinin (or artesunate), is a medication used to treat malaria. Discovery of artemisinin and its antimalarial properties by the Chinese scientist Tu Youyou led to the award of the 2011 Lasker Prize and 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.