Mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris) is a tall, aromatic wormwood relative whose deeply cut, silver-backed grey-green leaves carry a bittersweet, sagey-camphorous scent. Long the everyday bitter herb of European cookery — famously rubbed into roast goose and fatty meats in Germany to cut the grease — it leads a second, gentler life in East Asia as yomogi (Japan) and ssuk (Korea), where the tender spring shoots are pounded into grass-green rice cakes such as kusa mochi and ssuk-tteok.