Useful and medicinal properties of the mountaineer of the bird( sporis, bird's buckwheat, grass-mutant)

Family Buckwheat - Polygonaceae

Generic name - see Horace serpentine. Species definition in Latin means "bird", as the grass is readily eaten by birds, especially geese, but other animals, especially pigs, like it.

Botanical Description. Annual herbaceous plant with a thin stem root. Stems are rounded, thin, prostrate, knobby, usually branching from the very base 10-60 cm long. Leaves are regular, elliptical or lanceolate with a blunted apex. Whistles are whitish, filmy. Flowers are small, inflorescence is not separated, collected in bundles of 2-5 in the axils of leaves. The perianth is green at the bottom and white or pink at the top. The fruit is a small nutlet.

Blossoms and fruits from July until late autumn.

Geographical spread. It grows along roads, hiking trails, in villages along the streets without hard cover, near ditches, on pastures. Distributed

almost throughout the USSR, except the Far North, deserts and semi-deserts.

Collection and drying. Collect the grass during flowering - usually during the whole summer, cutting the above-ground part with a knife, and with thick thickets - a sickle or a scythe. Cut plants are sorted, removing the admixture of foreign plants. Dry quickly in attics, under canopies or outdoors in the shade, laying out a thin layer, and periodically tedious. When drying in dryers, the temperature should be 50-60 °.Drying is considered complete when the stems become brittle. It is impossible to overdry, as this leads to increased crushing during packing. The dried grass is sorted, discarding the darkened and yellowed parts.

Medicinal raw materials. Grass of the mountaineer of the bird( sporicha) - Herba Polygoni avicularis consists of olist-veined thin branched light-green cranial stems up to 40 cm long with leaves and flowers of the structure described. The smell is weak, the taste is slightly astringent.

FS 42-62-72 allows moisture no more than 13%;parts of grass that have lost their normal color, not more than 3%;roots not more than 2%;organic and mineral impurities not more than 2%.

Chemical composition. Grassgrass contains flavonoids( avicular, quercetin, kaempferol, myri-cetin, isoramnetin, luteolin, quercetin-3-arabinozid), coumarins( scopoletin and umbelliferone), 0.19% tannins, saponins, vitamin C( up to 887 mg100 g dry mass), carotene, volatile alkaloid, pectin, silicic acid compounds, organic acids, traces of essential oil, polysaccharide complex, etc.

Action and application. Grassgrass causes contraction of the uterus, accelerates the rate of blood clotting, increases diuresis, manifests hypotensive effect, increases the amplitude of respiratory movements. In the Russian folk and in scientific medicine, it is believed that with prolonged use of the herb, especially in combination with other diuretic drugs in the collections, renal concretions may crumble, turning into sand. This, apparently, is explained by the fact that cracks develop on the surface due to the dissolution of uric acid salts.

Apply as a decoction of 20 g. Raw materials per 200 ml

water 1 tablespoon 3 times daily before meals to treat uterine( atony, profuse menstruation) and hemorrhoidal bleeding. Included in many fees.