Lavender, Mugwort and Wormwood: Incense Spirals and Sticks from Temu
All three varieties come from Steve (Incense in The Wind); he bought them on Temu and sent me samples in May 2025. I’m linking his reviews under the respective variety.
Lavender
The colour of these coils had given me hope that they’d smell quite natural, since ground lavender takes on just such a greenish-grey colour.
Unlit, the coils got a very weak but soapy smell, however, and burnt, they smell perfumed but not really like lavender.
Added to that is an expectable smoke note, which at least isn’t unpleasant.
Mugwort
Despite my mugwort trauma1, I don’t find these mugwort coils bad at all.
The smell is authentic. It’s a really intense, herbaceously tart to bitter smell, with a very faintly sweet undertone; clearly recognisable as mugwort.
The smoke comes with the typical smell of burning greenery, which, when it becomes too dense, can resemble burning hair or horn. The sweetish tone contributes to that in a way.
Mugwort scent still isn’t my thing, but for people who like the smell of burning mugwort, I consider these little incense coils quite recommendable.
Al Coa Xlang | Wormwood
Mugwort and wormwood are close relatives; both belong to the genus Artemisia.
These Wormwood sticks smell relatively similar to the Mugwort coils, but milder and without having overly obvious off-notes. I suspect that the difference results, at least to a degree, from the fact that the sticks are considerably thinner than the moulded coils.
The smell is herbaceously bitter and relatively dry. I perceive the scent profile of Wormwood as slightly flatter than that of the Mugwort coils, but also far less loud.
Like with Mugwort, I’d say, for people who like bitter herbal scents, these affordable incense sticks are quite interesting.
- When I was still regularly out and about at renascence fairs, there was an infamous fella that everyone just called the ‘Mugwort Jesus’. He did nothing all day but burn mugwort bundles. The clouds of smoke were sometimes unbearable, especially if you had the bad luck of being placed quite near his camp.
I never particularly appreciated the smell of mugwort, but during that time I learnt to hate it.
By now, though, I seem to have overcome my ‘trauma’. đ âŠī¸