Tarragon
Artemisia dracunculus
A slender upright perennial of the daisy family, reaching 60–120cm from a spreading rhizome, with narrow untoothed leaves and a sweet anise scent when a leaf is crushed. Two plants share the name: French tarragon, the culinary form, which rarely sets viable seed and is grown from division, and the coarser seed-raised Russian tarragon, which can be almost scentless. The crush test settles which one you have.
Native to dry steppe and open stony ground across Eurasia and western North America. In Britain and Ireland it is essentially a garden plant, wanting full sun and sharp drainage, and turns up outside cultivation only as a short-lived escape on tips, allotment edges and waste ground near houses.
Long-established as a culinary herb, with no meaningful toxicity in kitchen quantities of leaf. The essential oil is high in estragole, so distilled oil and concentrated extracts sit outside that culinary use and are worth treating separately. People who react to other daisy-family foliage may find handling the plant irritating.
Always use more than one reference to confirm a plant. You are responsible for what you choose to forage.
Leaves
Narrow, smooth-edged and plain glossy green, 2–8cm long and sometimes forked at the tip. This is the quickest separation from the other garden and wayside Artemisias, mugwort and wormwood, whose leaves are deeply cut and grey-downy rather than entire.
Scent when crushed
A crushed leaf gives sweet anise or liquorice over a faint bitterness. A leaf that smells only grassy, or bitter with no anise at all, is Russian tarragon rather than French, and will disappoint in cooking.
Stems and habit
Many slender branching stems from a creeping rootstock, upright and becoming woody at the base by late summer. It forms a loose clump rather than the single stout stem of mugwort.
Flowers
Small, dull greenish-yellow nodding heads in loose sprays in late summer, easy to miss. French tarragon usually fails to set viable seed, so any plant raised from a seed packet is the Russian form.
Updated 2026-08-08T11:01:34.973Z · Part of the shared Foragers Log catalogue · Herb