Useful and medicinal properties of thyme creeping( thyme)
Family Labotic( Lunar) - Lamiaceae
The generic name comes from the Greek word thyo - a sacrifice, as the grass was thrown into the fire during this ceremony. Fragrant smoke( incense) symbolized, in the opinion of the ancient Greeks, the acceptance by the gods of the victim. Species definition in Latin means "creeping", as the plant spreads on the ground.
Botanical Description. The semi-shrub, forming the turf, with a strong peculiar pleasant smell. The stem in the lower part is woody, covered with dark-brown bark and often rooted, forming accessory roots. Upper shoots are herbaceous, upright, roundish, pubescent from all sides, 2-10 cm high. Leaves alternately opposite, sessile or with very short petioles, elliptical or elongate-oblong, entire, with numerous glands on the underside. Flowers pink and purple, collected at the tops of branches in axillary polumutovki, forming the head of the inflorescence. Calyx and corolla bilabiate. Fruit - a fractional, consisting of 4 nuts, sitting on the bottom of the cup.
Blossoms in June - July. Fruits ripen in August - September.
In the USSR, there are 168 species of thyme. They have a different chemical composition. Thus, in the north and in the central part of the European part of the USSR, including in the areas of preparation of thyme creeping - in Byelorussia, in Ukraine, thyme is ovate - Thymus ovatus Mill., Whose stems are tetrahedral at the top and pubescent,, the flowers are lilac, collected in a prolonged-capitate, often interrupted flowering.
Study of thyme essential oil creeping and ovoid, collected in the territory of Belarus( VI Popov), showed that ovum thyme contains almost 3-4 times less thymol and almost 20 times more carvacrol. This indicates the need to study the chemical composition of other plants in order to identify high-typos species.
Geographical distribution. Thyme creeping grows in open sandy places, including on dry meadows, on forest edges and glades, in young plantings of pine and birch, in sparse light pine and mixed forests. It occurs in the forest and steppe regions of the European part of the USSR and partly in some regions of Siberia. Isolated locations exist in the Caucasus, Central Asia, the Far East, the south of the Northern Urals.
The main areas of blanks are in Belarus, Ukraine, Voronezh and Rostov regions, Krasnodar and Stavropol Territories of the RSFSR.
Collection and drying. Collect raw materials during the flowering period in May-July, cutting off the upper grassy shoots with knives, scissors, pruners, pruners or sickles without lower lignified stems, trying not to tear the plants from their roots. Part of the turf should be left untouched for vegetative propagation of plants. When harvesting grass with scissors and pruning shears reproduction is faster and at the same place for billet can be returned in 2-3 years. In no case can you tear plants with roots, as this, firstly, will lead to the rapid destruction of thickets, and secondly, the raw material will contain more permissible mineral impurities, and hence the ash that will force it to reject.
Dry the raw material in the shade under the awnings, in the attics, laying out a thin layer and periodically turning over and moving. When the leaves and flowers begin to crumble, the drying is stopped, and the raw material is threshed, the stems are discarded, then sieved through a sieve.
Medicinal raw materials. Finished raw materials - herb-herb( Herba Serpylli) consists of a mixture of leaves and flowers with an admixture of thin branches. Leaves up to 15 mm long, at the base there are long, rare bristly hairs, clearly discernible even without a magnifying glass. The flowers are small, single or collected in several pieces. Calyx brownish-red. Outdoors, pubescent, with a hairy ring in the throat. Teeth calyx on margin with ciliate hairs. Corolla length 5-8 mm, bluish-violet, stamens four, two of them shorter, pestle with upper four-lobed ovary.
The smell is fragrant, the taste is bitterish-spicy, slightly burning.
GOST 21816-76 admits: moisture not more than 13%;ash not more than 12%;stems more than 0.5 mm thick not more than 10%;organic impurity not more than 1%;mineral impurity not more than 1%;the content of extractives extracted by 30% alcohol, not less than 18%.
Chemical composition. The herb contains up to 1% of essential oil, which contains up to 30% of crystalline thymol( in Belarusian 9.52%), up to 20% of its liquid isomer of carvacrol( in Belarusian
0.65%), cymol hydrocarbon, a- and( 3-pinene, y-terpene, a-terpineol, borneol, chingberen and 9 terpenoids. There are flavonoids, tannins, bitter, gum, ursolic and oleanolic acids, mineralsalts, etc.
Action and application Thymol and carvacrol in thymol essential oil are monoatomic phenols and, like all phenols, they have bactericidal properties. Unlike carbolic acid( phenol), they are less toxic, less irritating mucous membranes and have strongeraction on strepto- and staphylococciFungicidal properties also disinfect the upper respiratory tract, have a slight expectorant effect. Thrystal thymol paralyzes the muscles of ribbon worms and vlasoglavov.
Infusion of 10-15 g. Raw materials for 200 ml of water appoint 1-2 tablespoons 2-3 times inday as calming at dry and spastic cough, especially with whooping cough, when strong expectorants are contraindicated, with chronic bronchitis, bronchial asthma, pneumonia with mucous sputum, and also with chronic gastritis, spastictheir pains in the stomach and intestines, with digestion disorders, flatulence, peptic ulcer disease, externally as wound healing, restoring epithelization of tissues, especially with burns.
Liquid extract of thyme is a part of the complex syrup of pertussin, which is used for cough and whooping cough.
External infusion of grass is used for baths with hypertension, rheumatism, radiculitis, nervous diseases and diseases associated with metabolic disorders, with eye diseases. In the latter case, 10% oil extract is more effective. Infusions rinse your mouth and throat with inflammation of the mucous membrane of the mouth and throat.5% of the infusion of herbs is used in the treatment of alcoholism.