Useful and medicinal properties of dandelion medicinal( common)
Family Compositae( Asters) - Asteraceae
The generic name comes from the Greek tarasso- soothing - by the use of the plant by the ancient Greeks. The specific definition of "pharmacy" is associated with the medicinal application of the root.
Botanical Description. A perennial herbaceous plant with a short-stemmed root. At the top, it passes into a short vertical rhizome, which for old plants branches and then several flower arrows are formed, while in young plants it is one. The leaves are collected in a basal rosette. They are lanceolate and peristopalous in shape, and then pinnately divided, striated in shape according to
, with obliquely directed lobes pointed obliquely. Floral arrows round, inside hollow, unbranched, 5-30( 50) cm in height, end with single baskets with a common wrapper. Leaflets of the envelope - from lanceolate to lanceolate-linear, the outer ones are rejected, the inner ones are pressed against the inflorescence. All flowers are reed, yellow. The calyx is absent, instead of it there is a tuft. Stamens 5, fused anthers into a tube. Pistil with a two-rasped stigma, ovary inferior, single-cavity.
Fruits - achenes with a tuft, collected on a naked receptacle in a white bowl.
The whole plant contains white milky juice.
Blossoms in May - July, fruits ripen 1 month after the beginning of flowering and are carried by the wind. Dandelion baskets open in the morning, and then the places where it grows, take a yellow background. In inclement weather and at night, the inflorescence is closed.
Geographic distribution. Dandelion is a cosmopolitan plant. Thanks to the fact that its fruits are far from the wind, it is widely distributed in the territory of our country. It grows almost everywhere except the Far North, deserts and semi-deserts of Central Asia and the northeast of Siberia. Particularly abundant in housing, where it often forms large thickets, grows in meadows, glades and fringes, along grassy slopes, along roads, on the border.
The main areas of blanks are in the Baltic States, Belarus, Ukraine and in a number of regions of the RSFSR.
Despite the huge reserves of raw materials, in our country the question is raised about the culture of this plant, which will allow mechanizing the collection of raw materials of a higher quality.
Collection and drying. Prepare the roots of dandelion, starting from the second half of August until late autumn. Plants dig up with shovels, shake the ground, cut off the entire aboveground part, leaving the rhizome, remove small roots, wash with cold water and put in baskets or buckets.
Before drying, the roots are poured into small heaps and wilted until the milky juice ceases to be extracted from the incisions. After that, the raw material is sprinkled with a thin layer and dried in the sun, under canopies, in attics or in dryers at a temperature of 40-50 ° to the brittleness of the roots.
Medicinal raw materials. Finished raw materials - dandelion root( Radix Taraxaci) consists of rod, often twisted, whole roots up to 15 cm in length or pieces of roots not shorter than 2 cm with a thickness of 0.3-3 cm. Outside, the roots are longitudinally wrinkled with light brown or dark brown color, in the fracture are uneven. In the center of the root, yellow or yellowish-brown wood is clearly visible, surrounded by a broad grayish-white bark, with well-marked brownish concentric circles of mallelers( not to confuse the bark with the stopper).
There is no smell, the taste is sweetish-bitterish.
When wetting the root fracture with iodine solution, no blue staining is formed, indicating that there is no starch.
GOST 2397-75 allows: moisture not more than 14%;total ash not more than 8%;crushed roots less than 2 cm in length not more than 5%;light weight, flabby roots not more than 2%;roasted in the fracture of roots no more than 10%;; roots with root necks, petioles, leaves no more than 4%;organic impurity not more than 0.5%;mineral - no more than 2%.The content of extractives extracted by water must be at least 40%.
Inexperienced collectors often collect a kulbabu autumn instead of dandelion - Leontodon autumnalis L., whose flowers are also yellow, reed and leaves are like dandelion leaves. In this plant the flower arrow is branched, with a very small cavity inside, and the roots are thinner and quite branched.
When the dandelion is too early, when the supply of nutrients is not deferred in the roots, the raw material after drying is obtained flabby, lightweight, with an easily detached stopper and bark. In this case, he is rejected.
Chemical composition. The dandelion root contains up to 10% of the bitter substance of taraxacin, triterpene compounds: taraxerol, taraxasterol, and others;sterols: fj-sitosterol and stigmasterol;flavonoids: cosmosyne, luteolin-7-glucoside;up to 24% of inulin, up to 3% of rubber, fatty oil, etc.
Action and application. Dandelion bitter substances increase appetite and improve digestion( see Watch), somewhat stimulate the secretion of gastric juice, increase the content of hydrochloric acid in it. Flavonoids possess choleretic action.
The root is applied in the form of a decoction at the rate of 10-20 g of raw material per 200 ml of water for 1 tablespoon before eating with anorexia of various etiologies, anacid gastritis, hepatitis and inflammations of the gallbladder, Botkin's disease. Due to the high content of inulin is prescribed for diabetes. The action is enhanced by the combination of the root of the dandelion with the leaves of blueberries, nettles and bean leaves.