Useful and medicinal properties of celandine large
Family Poppy - Papaveraceae
The generic name comes from the Greek cheli-don - swallow, as the celandine blooms with the arrival of the swallows.
Botanical Description. Perennial herbaceous plant with a short vertical rhizome, which passes into a thick branched subordinate root. Old plants have several roots. Inside they are yellow, outside are reddish-brown. Stems erect, branched at the top, glabrous or below, with deflected hairs, up to 100 cm high. The leaves are regular, the lower leaves are petiolate, the upper ones are sessile, not paired with pairs, with 7-11 segments round or ovoid in shape with a crenate margin.
Flowers are golden yellow, collected in umbellate inflorescences. The calyx consists of two sepals, which fall off when the flowers bloom. Corolla is made up of four free petals. There are a lot of stamens, and a pistil is one with the upper single-cavity ovary.
Fruit is a podular capsule opening with two, I flaps from the bottom up. Seeds are small, black-brown, with a crest white appendage, which are eaten by ants. At the same time they carry seeds, promoting the spread of the plant. For this reason, celandine often occurs in anthills.
All parts of celandine contain orange milky juice.
Blossoms from May to July, and in the southern regions a fortnight before. Fruits ripen since June. When mowing, secondary blooming is observed in July-August.
The plant is poisonous!
Geographic distribution. It grows like a weed plant in parks and gardens, on vacant lots, near habitation, at fences, in forest belts, on cutting areas. It occurs in the European part of the USSR, in the Caucasus, in the mountains of East Kazakhstan and Central Asia, in Siberia. Sometimes forms thickets.
Collection and drying. Collect the entire aboveground part in the second half of April - May - early July, cutting off with knives or sickles.
Dry in lofts under an iron roof, underneath on scales or in dryers at a temperature of 50-60 °.
Medicinal raw materials. Finished raw materials - herb celandine( Herba Chelidonii) consists of leafy stems with flowers and fruits of different stages of maturity, slightly ribbed up to 30-50 cm long. Leaves lyrate with crenate lobules. The upper side of the leaves is green, the lower side is bluish, veins are covered with veins.
The odor is peculiar, the taste is bitter-burning.
Chemical composition. The herb celandine contains alkaloids( chelidonin, sanguinarine, chelidamine, pro-topin, sparteine, traces of berberine, etc.), amines( choline, histamine, tyramine and methylamine), flavonoids( rutin, kaempferol and quercetin), tannins, organic acidscitric, succinic and malic), gamma-pyrone derivatives( chelidonic acid), vitamins( C and carotene, saponins, etc.).
Action and application. Milk juice celandine acts well as an analgesic for diseases of the liver and gallbladder, with catarrh of the stomach, intestines, diarrhea, with digestion disorders.
Inward, cleanliness is prescribed in small doses( poisonous!) Under the regular supervision of a doctor in the form of infusion - from 3-5 grams of raw material per 200 ml of water in a tablespoon 3 times a day. Juice celandine is used to cauterize warts, condylomas, with the initial forms of lupus erythematosus, to remove calluses. Apply liquid to the body 3 times a day.