The coltsfoot plant is one of the common, widely known and popular, its appearance is familiar to almost everyone. Many owners of summer cottages fight it like a malicious weed, not realizing that they are destroying a useful medicinal plant. We offer you to get acquainted with its medical properties, contraindications for use, as well as learn some interesting facts.
Description
The coltsfoot plant is a perennial member of the Compositae family, a relative of the beautiful garden flower, the aster. Indeed, if you look closely, the sunny yellow small flower of the plant is very similar to the beautiful red, pink or white aster head. Features of coltsfoot as a representative of the flora are as follows:
- Long creeping rhizome.
- There are two types of shoots. Flower-bearing ones are formed in early spring, their height is no more than 30 cm, at the end of each there is a head - a flower. After flowering, these shoots die off immediately.
- Vegetative - the second type of shoot, leaves are located on them. Formed some time after the completion of flowering.
- The sheets are very unusual, on the inside soft, pleasant to the touch, on the outside - smooth, cold. The parties refer to each other as "mother" and "stepmother" respectively.
- The shape of the leaf is rounded, at the ends there are characteristic notches, the size depends on age. Mature leaves often reach 20 cm in diameter. Color - deep green.
- The flower is a basket of bright yellow color, reaches a diameter of 2.5 cm. It is with their flowers that the coltsfoot plant and the dandelion are very similar, but the second has a larger diameter.
- The fruit is an achene.
Relates to the number of amazingly prolific, for the season just one bush is able to produce almost 20 thousand seeds, which themselves have good germination.
Name
Consider why the plant was called coltsfoot. There are several sad legends that explain this strange name.
In ancient times, a man left his family for another woman, leaving his wife and daughter with beautiful golden hair. But the new wife, tormented by jealousy, decided to destroy the child, lured the girl to a cliff and threw her down. The mother, sensing that her child was in danger, ran to the ominous place, but was late - the girl could no longer be saved. In desperation, she rushed at the killer, and both of them fell down, not unclenching their deadly embrace. The next morning, a huge number of unusual plants appeared at the cliff, one half of the leaf symbolizedmaternal love, the other is the jealousy of a stepmother. And the sunny yellow flowers gave rise to associations with the blond hair of the deceased girl.
Another legend explaining the origin of the name of the plant coltsfoot is as follows. One woman had a daughter, in whom she did not have a soul, and an unloved stepdaughter. Fate took away her own child from her, so the unfortunate mother spent many hours at the cemetery, stroking the ground on the grave. So the plant grew, one half of its leaves was warm, like a mother's love for her own daughter, the other half was cold, like a woman's indifference to her stepdaughter.
Distribution
Let's continue the description of the coltsfoot plant by indicating the places where it can be found. There are many of them, primarily sun-drenched glades, ravines, river banks. The plant is also found on forest edges, summer cottages, fields, meadows, preferring wet clay soils without turf. This natural healer grows in Western Europe, Siberia, Asia, and is also found on the African and North American continents.
Features
The coltsfoot medicinal plant is interesting because in the spring (mid-March - early April), flowers first appear, and then leaves. For this feature in the UK, the flower is called "the son before the father." The plant has a powerful root that goes into the ground for a meter, develops at a very high speed, so it can become a real disaster for fields and gardens, displacing cultivated plants. Sometimes coltsfoot is called the first herald of spring, because modestyellow flowers begin to decorate the ground, barely free of snow.
Grows in families, so the meadow is almost always strewn with yellow baskets: if one flower has already faded, then the second one is just starting to bloom. After that, like a dandelion, the plant scatters seeds located on fluffy villi.
Leaves and inflorescences are used as medicinal raw materials, it is recommended to collect the latter in July, without waiting for them to grow large and coarsen. The resulting raw material should be dried in the fresh air, avoiding exposure to direct sunlight, periodically turning over.
Healing properties
The use of the plant for medical purposes began in ancient Greece and Rome. Since these ancient times, it has been known that the gift of nature helps to cope with the symptoms of bronchitis and alleviate the course of bronchial asthma. Hippocrates and Avicenna used it in their work.
In Latin, the coltsfoot plant is called Tussilago farfara L., which means "healing cough". The name very accurately characterizes the specifics of the perennial, its flowers really allow you to quickly get rid of throat diseases, including cough, both dry and wet. But that's not all. The plant has such an extensive list of medicinal properties that it is used not only in traditional medicine, but also in quite traditional medicine. There are several main effects:
- Disinfectant action.
- Expectorant effect.
- Due to the content of tannins in the leavesthe plant inhibits the growth of pathogenic microorganisms.
- Essential oils are good for the heart.
- The plant is used for pathologies of internal organs: kidneys, bladder, intestines, stomach.
- The leaves of the plant are applied to wounds and burns for their speedy healing.
- The healing flower will help with increased fatigue, drowsiness, overwork.
Sometimes coltsfoot as part of complex therapy is used to treat a wide range of diseases of the throat, oral cavity, and purulent infections. However, it is important to remember that, having consumed a large amount of a drug, it is impossible to speed up getting rid of the disease, but it is very easy to harm yourself. Therefore, the dosage should be strictly observed and, in case of disputes, seek the advice of a medical specialist.
Contraindications
The coltsfoot medicinal plant has several contraindications that should be taken into account by everyone who decides to improve their he alth and well-being with its help. Who should not eat flowers and leaves?
- Pregnant women and young mothers during lactation.
- Children under 3.
- With liver pathologies (hepatitis, cirrhosis).
- For persistent menstrual irregularities.
- Individual intolerance cases.
Also, doctors do not recommend extending the course for more than 1.5 months, because after regular intake of coltsfoot grass, glycosides accumulate in the body and beginpoison him. The use of the plant in conjunction with antipyretic drugs is possible only after agreement with the physician.
Possible side effects
When properly taken in compliance with the dosage, coltsfoot rarely adversely affects a person's he alth. However, the following side effects are possible:
- Breach of stool.
- Vomiting and nausea.
- Abdominal cramps.
Most often they occur when using a medicinal plant in unreasonably large doses. In this case, the reception will stop immediately.
Best Recipes
Let's get acquainted with the most useful recipes from the piggy bank of folk wisdom that will help you use the healing properties of the coltsfoot plant with maximum benefit. You can quickly get rid of a cough with the help of this remedy: pour a glass of boiling water 1 tsp. leaves of the plant, insist for 30 minutes. Drink the resulting drink three times a day for 1 tbsp. l. 10 minutes before meals. After 2-3 days, only memories will remain from coughing.
The following infusion will help to normalize the acidity of the stomach: 20 g of dried flowers are taken for 1 liter of boiling water, the time for infusion is 60 minutes. Then the product is filtered with gauze, taken every 6 hours, 100 ml each.
For a choking cough, you can use the smoke from the plant. To do this, crushed dry grass and leaves are poured into a hot frying pan, and a person suffering from a cough inhales the resulting smoke. 2-3 minute treatment will bring reliefalmost immediately.
Fancy pasta
Cotherm-and-stepmother is a useful plant that can also be eaten, surprising the household with an unusual dish, the ingredients of which they will never guess. So, for cooking you will need:
- Apple.
- Butter - 2 tbsp. l.
- coltsfoot flowers - ½ cup.
- Sugar - 1 tsp
- Cinnamon - a little, on the tip of a knife.
The apple should be baked in the oven, then grind to a puree state, mix with butter, flowers, sugar, add cinnamon. The result is a sweet paste that can be spread on bread or eaten as jam.
Interesting facts
In conclusion, we offer you to get acquainted with a selection of fascinating facts about an amazing plant:
- The coltsfoot is the emblem of pharmacies in Paris.
- The root of the plant was also used for medicinal purposes, but now only the ground parts are used.
- The duration of flowering is almost 40 days, which is a real record for the first spring flowers.
- The mother-and-stepmother plant is a honey plant, and it is very useful, it helps to wake up the hardworking inhabitants of the hive. The honey productivity of the flower is low, but the problem can be solved due to a large number: often bright yellow baskets decorate meadows and fields, giving the bees the opportunity to collect the required amount of nectar.
- This representative of the florais also a natural barometer that allows you to predict the weather.
- The plant grows very well on fires, uses ashes as fertilizer.
- In the old days, the flower even had its own day - April 10th. It was believed that potions prepared from raw materials plucked that day had magical properties.
We examined the features of the appearance of an amazing inhabitant of meadows and ravines, learned the history of the origin of the coltsfoot plant, its medicinal properties.
