Artemisia Dried

Artemisia ludoviciana, better known as Silver King or white sage, dried to a metallic silver-grey with tiny pale yellow flowers scattered through it. The leaves are soft and felted, the stems are stiff and upright, and the whole thing carries a clean herbal scent that comes up when you handle it.

It works as a neutraliser. Set against bright reds and oranges it cools them down and stops an arrangement looking garish; used on its own or with white it reads as frost. That is why it turns up in so much winter and Christmas work, where it does the job of frosted pine without the drop. Stems are 60cm and up and hold their line without drooping, so it gives structure as well as colour.

The silver is not a pigment. It comes from a dense layer of fine hairs on the leaf surface, which is worth knowing because it changes how you look after it. Humidity is the enemy rather than light: a steamy bathroom will flatten those hairs and turn the leaves a duller green. Keep it somewhere dry and the silver stays metallic for years. Grown, harvested and air-dried on the farm here in Norfolk, cut in late summer when the silver is at its strongest.