Wormwood, Black Walnut & Clove: A Botanical Guide

Wormwood gave absinthe its name. It also contains thujone, a compound EU law caps at 35 mg/kg in alcoholic drinks made from Artemisia species. That one fact shapes this whole page: it is why this blend is a short course rather than a daily habit.

Botanicals

Artemisia absinthium, Juglans nigra, Syzygium aromaticum

Parts used

Leaf and flowering tops; green fruit hull; dried flower bud

Origins

Europe, North America, Indonesia

Per serving

1,440 mg blend, two capsules. Milled powder, not extract

Formats

60 vegan capsules, or 60 ml alcohol-free drops

Allergen

Contains walnut (tree nut)

Two things before anything else. This product contains walnut. Walnut is a tree nut and a declarable allergen. If you have a nut allergy of any kind, do not take it. And wormwood contains thujone, a naturally occurring compound with real regulatory limits attached to it — which is why this is a short-term botanical and not something to take continuously. Both points are set out in full below.

01 The three plants

Three botanicals, three plant families, three continents. They are sold together out of long habit, not because they are related to one another in any way. Each is worth taking separately.

Wormwood (Artemisia absinthium)

A perennial herb, Artemisia absinthium L., in the family Asteraceae — daisies and sunflowers, along with chamomile, mugwort, ragweed, echinacea and yarrow. That family membership matters if you have a known plant allergy.

The plant reaches roughly a metre, sometimes taller. Deeply divided silvery-grey leaves under fine silky hairs; small, dull-yellow, button-like flower heads in loose sprays in late summer. Crush any part of it and the smell is unmistakable. The part used is the aerial part — leaf and flowering tops, Absinthii herba in pharmacopoeial terms.

Wormwood is native to temperate Europe, North Africa and western Asia, and has naturalised widely elsewhere, including much of North America. It is a coloniser of dry, poor, open ground: roadsides, waste ground, field margins, rubble, stony banks. Drought and thin soil suit it. Supply comes both from cultivated stands, particularly in eastern and southern Europe, and from wild-gathered plants.

Absinthe takes its name directly from absinthium. Vermouth is the German Wermut — wormwood — run through French.

Both are naming facts, and nothing more is meant by mentioning them.

Black walnut (Juglans nigra)

A large deciduous tree, Juglans nigra L., family Juglandaceae — walnuts and hickories. Mature trees reach 30 metres or more, with dark, deeply furrowed bark and long pinnate leaves of many narrow leaflets. The fruit is a round green drupe about the size of a tennis ball. Inside the thick green husk sits a very hard ridged nutshell, and inside that the kernel.

It is native to eastern and central North America, from southern Ontario down through the eastern and midwestern United States, growing in rich bottomland woods and along river valleys. It is also planted for timber and nuts, including in parts of Europe. It is not the European or Persian walnut, Juglans regia, which is the walnut sold as food in the UK.

In supplements the part conventionally used is the green outer hull of the unripe fruit rather than the kernel. That distinction changes nothing about the allergen: the material is walnut and is treated as a tree nut. Our label states the ingredient as black walnut powder. Check the pack for the current full specification.

Clove (Syzygium aromaticum)

An evergreen tree, Syzygium aromaticum (L.) Merr. & L.M. Perry, family Myrtaceae, alongside myrtle, eucalyptus and allspice. It grows to around 10–20 metres, with glossy leathery leaves and clusters of small flower buds at the branch tips.

The part used is the dried, unopened flower bud, picked just before it opens and dried until it turns reddish-brown. A nail with a rounded head — which is where the English name comes from, via the French clou.

Clove is native to the Maluku Islands of eastern Indonesia, the old Spice Islands. Commercial cultivation now runs across the humid tropics: principally Indonesia, Madagascar, Tanzania — including Zanzibar and Pemba — Sri Lanka, India and Brazil. Unlike wormwood, clove is a plantation crop. Essentially all commercial supply is cultivated rather than wild-gathered.

02 What's in our product

Two formats: capsules and alcohol-free liquid drops. The composition figures below are for the capsules, where the per-serving quantity is stated on the label. For the drops, the label is the reference.

Whole powder, not a concentrated extract

Plenty of botanical supplements, several of ours included, use a concentrated extract described by a ratio such as 10:1. This blend is not one of them, and the difference is easy to misread on a shelf.

A 10:1 ratio describes how much dried raw plant went into a given weight of finished extract. Ten parts of dried herb are processed down to one part of extract, so 10 kg of dried herb yields 1 kg of 10:1 extract powder, and a 900 mg serving of that extract is described as equivalent to 900 × 10 = 9,000 mg of whole dried herb.

Our capsules do not work that way. They contain the milled dried botanicals themselves — black walnut powder, clove powder and wormwood powder. No concentration step, no ratio to apply.

The 1,440 mg blend in a two-capsule serving is 1,440 mg of dried plant material. Read it literally.

None of this is a quality judgement either way. Powder and extract are different manufacturing choices, not better and worse ones. But a "10:1" figure and a plain powder figure are not the same unit and cannot be set side by side.

Capsules — composition

Botanicals

Wormwood (Artemisia absinthium), black walnut (Juglans nigra), clove (Syzygium aromaticum)

Form of the botanicals

Milled dried plant powder. Not a concentrated extract; no extract ratio applies

Per serving (two capsules)

1,440 mg botanical blend of black walnut powder, clove powder and wormwood powder

Per capsule

720 mg of the blend

Capsule shell

Plant-derived cellulose. No gelatin, no animal-derived ingredients

Suitable for vegans

Yes

Allergens

Contains walnut (tree nut). Free from gluten, dairy and soy

Additives

Non-GMO; free from artificial additives

Bottle count

60 capsules

How long a bottle lasts

30 days at two capsules daily — a one-month supply

Manufacture and testing

Made in the UK under GMP standards; every batch lab tested for purity and consistency

Dispatch

From the UK

Liquid drops — composition

Botanicals

The same three: wormwood, black walnut and clove, in liquid form

Base

Vegetable glycerin. Alcohol-free — no ethanol tincture base

Bottle size

60 ml, supplied with a dropper

Suitable for vegans

Yes

Allergens

Contains walnut (tree nut). Free from gluten, dairy and soy

Additives

Non-GMO; free from artificial colours, flavours and unnecessary fillers

Per-serving quantities

See the product label. The drops are a different format with a different serving size from the capsules, so we do not restate capsule figures here

Manufacture and testing

Made in the UK under GMP standards; every batch lab tested

03 How to take it

Capsules

The label is short. Take two capsules daily, preferably with a meal and water. Do not exceed the recommended amount.

• Timing. The label does not specify a time of day. Picking the same meal each day makes the habit easier to keep and easier to stop.
• With or without food. The label says preferably with a meal. Bitter and tannin-rich plant material is generally more comfortable taken with food than on an empty stomach.
• Together or split. Two capsules is the daily serving. Whether you take both at one meal or one at each of two meals, the daily total stays at two.
• Swallow whole, with a full glass of water.
• Do not exceed the labelled serving. This point carries more weight here than on most of our products, for the thujone reasons set out below.
• Not for prolonged continuous use. Keep to short periods of use with regular breaks.

Drops

Use as directed on the label and do not exceed the recommended amount. The drops carry their own serving instruction. Follow it. Do not convert from the capsule figure or estimate an equivalent.

• Measuring. Squeeze the bulb, draw liquid into the pipette and count the drops. Glycerin is viscous, so drops form slowly; hold the dropper vertical and let each one fall rather than shaking it out.
• Taking them. Drops can be taken directly, or stirred into a small glass of water or juice. Diluting is the usual choice, for reasons the taste section makes clear.
• Hygiene. Do not let the pipette touch your mouth, then return it to the bottle. Return it clean.
• Not for prolonged continuous use, exactly as with the capsules.

Storage. Keep both formats tightly closed in a cool, dry place, out of direct sunlight. Not above a hob, not on a windowsill, not in a steamy bathroom cabinet — heat, light and humidity are what degrade dried plant material and glycerin-based liquids. Keep out of the sight and reach of children; the walnut allergen and the wormwood content both make this important. Check the best-before date on the pack, and note the after-opening period on the drops if one is shown.

04 Taste and format

This is not a pleasant-tasting blend. The capsule format exists largely because of that.

Wormwood is among the most bitter plants in common use — bitter in a lingering, resinous, medicinal way rather than a coffee-like way, with a dry herbal aroma somewhere between sage and hay. That bitterness is the plant's defining sensory feature, and the reason it named absinthe and vermouth.

Black walnut hull is astringent and tannic. Drying, mouth-puckering, like over-brewed black tea or unripe fruit skin, with a woody, faintly inky note. The powder is dark brown.

Clove is the one recognisable note: warm, sweet, pungent, intensely aromatic, with the numbing tingle familiar from the spice rack and from dental products. It dominates the smell of the blend even where it does not dominate the taste.

Capsules sidestep almost all of this. The cellulose shell does not dissolve until it is past the palate, so a swallowed capsule tastes of nothing much. You will smell clove when you open the bottle. Split a capsule open and you get the full bitter-astringent-aromatic effect, which is why most people do not.

Drops put the taste back. The vegetable glycerin base is mildly sweet and syrupy and softens the edges a little, but it does not hide wormwood — nothing really does. Taken neat, the sequence most people describe is clove first, then a hard bitterness, then a dry astringent finish that lingers. In a glass of water or juice it is far more manageable. Something with body, apple or orange juice, masks it better than water.

Choose capsules if taste is the deciding factor. Choose drops if you dislike swallowing capsules or want the flexibility of a measured liquid. Our general comparison of the two formats is on the capsules or drops page. Batch-to-batch variation in colour, aroma and intensity is normal for plant material and reflects harvest and growing conditions, not a fault.

05 Where to find it

More background reading is on our botanical guides index, and the format comparison is on the capsules or drops page.

UK Standard delivery

£3.95 — free on orders of £30 or more

UK Express delivery

£4.95 — free on orders of £48 or more

Dispatch

Within 1–2 business days

Typical delivery time

1–4 business days, by Royal Mail or Amazon Logistics

Returns

30 days from receipt to request a return. Item must be unopened, untampered, in its original packaging, with proof of purchase. Email hello@probotanics.co.uk to start — an accepted return receives a return shipping label and instructions. Items sent back without requesting a return first are not accepted. For damaged, defective or incorrect items, contact us immediately on receipt.

Questions

hello@probotanics.co.uk

ProBotanics Ltd is a UK company, number 13685177, with its registered office at 86-90 Paul Street, London, EC2A 4NE. The company was incorporated on 18 October 2021 as Peak Supplements Ltd and renamed ProBotanics Ltd on 28 November 2023, when the brand moved away from its original sports and bodybuilding range to single-botanical food supplements.

This is a food supplement, not a medicine. It is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any medical condition, and it is not a substitute for a varied and balanced diet or a healthy lifestyle. Contains walnut. Not for use during pregnancy or breastfeeding. If you are pregnant, breastfeeding, taking any medication or under medical care, speak to your doctor or pharmacist before use. Keep out of the sight and reach of children.