abstract the essential oils of artemisia absinthium l. and artemisia scoparia waldst. et kit. (compositae) collected from the suburb of behshar, northern iran, in june 2002, were isolated by hydrodistillation and analyzed by means of gc and gc/ms. the major components of a. absinthium oil were -thujone (35.1%), p-cymene (16.5%), -pinene (7.3%) and 7-ethyl-5,6-dihydro-1,4-dimethylazulene (5.5%). the major components of a. scoparia oil were camphor (37.9%), 1,8-cineole (27.8%) and borneol (21.1%).