Useful and medicinal properties of the medicinal millet
Families of Legumes - Fabaceae
The generic name is translated from Latin - "honey clover", since the grass is a good honey, and the leaves of the plant are the same as those of the clover. Species definition means "pharmacy" - medicinal( in contrast to other species of this genus).
Botanical Description. A biennial herbaceous plant with a stem root. Stem erect, branchy, 0.5-1.5 m high. Leaves alternate, triple with two lanceolate stipules. Leaflets oblong-obovate or elliptical with serrate margin. The flowers are yellow, collected in the apical and numerous axillary brushes. They are butterfly, not large - 5-7 mm long. Fruits are bare beans, short, oval, upward with a subulate spiky.
Blossoms in June - August;Fruits ripen from July to late autumn.
Along with this species, the Melllotus altissimus Thuill. Is used, which is distinguished by larger flowers with pubescent calyx, beans with sparse hairs.
Not widely used white melonot - Melilotus albus Medik., Whose flowers are white.
Geographical distribution. It grows on vacant lots, on roadsides, on dry and steppe meadows. It occurs as a weed on steam fields, in young forest belts. Distributed throughout the European part of the USSR, in the middle and southern Urals, in Western Siberia. In Belarus it often forms thickets.
Due to the low demand for medicinal raw materials, it is limited only in Ukraine.
Collection and drying. Collect at the time of flowering tops and side shoots up to 30 cm in length with a stem thickness of not more than 3 mm, cutting them with a knife, sickle or scissors. Dry in attics, in well-ventilated areas, under canopies. When drying, the plant acquires a strong and distinctive odor, which is often compared to the smell of fresh hay, although, on the contrary, hay smells like a sweet clover.
Medicinal raw materials. Finished raw materials - the herb of the clover( Herba Meliloti) consists of leafy and flowering apices and lateral branches of the described structure. Leaflets along the edge with 10-13 uneven denticles in the dwarf officinalis and with 8-20 denticles in the sweet clover. The flowers are yellow, the calyx is campanulate, five-toothed, remains with fruits, naked - in the sweet clover and pubescent - in the sweet clover. Sometimes there are immature fruits with one, rarely two seeds. The smell is fragrant( coumarin), the taste is bitterish.
GOST 14101-69 allows moisture not more than 14%;ash not more than 10%;Stems more than 3 mm in diameter not more than 2%;screening through a sieve with a hole diameter of 0.5 mm is not more than 5%;yellowed, browned and blackened parts of plants no more than 2%;organic impurity not more than 1%;mineral impurity not more than 0.5%.
Organic impurities include parts of other plants and other species of sweet clover. Donnik white differs in color of flowers, and denticle dentate - Melilotus dentatus Pers.on a larger number of denticles on leaflets.
Chemical composition. Grass clover contains 0,4-0,9% coumarin, which gives the raw smell( fresh grass contains the glycoside kumari-
gene), dihydrocoumarin - melilotin with the same smell, coumaroma and melilot acid, glycoside melilotozid, flavonoids, purine derivatives, fat-like substances, proteins, traces of essential oil, etc.
Action and application. Outwardly infusion of herbs from 30 g. Raw materials for 200 ml of water in the form of lotions, baths and compresses are used for boils, ulcers, mastitis and articular rheumatism. In order to accelerate the "ripening" of the boil, use an oil extract on sunflower oil, which is prepared by infusion for 3 hours in a water bath from 1 part of the cut grass with 9 parts of sunflower oil, and then filtered through a cotton swab hot.
In many publications about medicinal plants indicate the use of clover in various diseases in the form of infusions and broths in home conditions. This should not be done, as it is not safe. Especially dangerous is the combined use with drugs that reduce blood coagulability, in particular with synthetic anticoagulants.