Open backache, or sleep-grass

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:47

Open backache, which is popularly called sleep-grass, is a perennial herbaceous plant of the genus Backache from the Ranunculaceae family. In late April or early May, immediately after the snow cover melts, you can see a fabulously beautiful primrose plant. With white, yellow, brown-red and purple petals of delicate flowers, lumbago announces the coming of spring.

Appearance

A plant with flowers with six pointed petals of purple or lilac color is an open lumbago. Its root system is vertical, multi-headed. In the lower part of the stem, basal, pinnately dissected leaves are formed, and thin and long simple stem leaves grow together at the bases. Both those and others are covered with a light fluff. Each individual plant has one large flower at the top of the stem, shaped like an upright or lowered bell.

Description

Interesting features have a wild grass - lumbagodisclosed. The description of the species indicates that under favorable conditions it grows up to 25 centimeters in height, growing every year from a powerful dark brown root. Root leaves on long petioles grow after flowering, and die off in autumn. The upright stem is also covered in soft fluffy hairs.

Sleep-grass flowers have numerous yellow stamens and pistils with long fluffy columns up to 5 centimeters in length. Outside, the petals are densely covered with down. Tender heads bloom either before the appearance of leaves, or simultaneously with them. The spring plant blooms in April and May, forming oblong and strongly hairy fruits at the end of the season, which give the appearance a special decorative effect.

Spread of lumbago

Open backache - sleep-grass - prefers soddy-podzolic soils, characteristic of sparse pine forests, as well as mixed pine-birch and pine-oak forests. Flowers grow on slopes and in thickets of berry bushes, on mosses and grass litter. Shooting glades can be found in the meadows and steppes of the European part of Russia, in Siberia and the Far East. In addition, the distribution area of this species is Europe, Asia, North America.

Types of lumbago

The genus contains approximately 40 different species, native to the cold, temperate, subtropical regions of the Northern Hemisphere. Most (26 species of the genus Pasque) are observed on the territory of the republics of the former Soviet Union, including the open pasque, which is growingin Central and Western Europe, in the European part of Russia, in the south of Western Siberia.

In light pine forests and on the edges there are Turchaninov's backache, spring, meadow. On the high vast plateaus and peaks of the Crimean mountains, as well as in the cracks of the rocks of the mountain ranges of Central Europe, one can find the Crimean species. Most varieties of sleep-grass are listed in the Red Book of the subjects of the Russian Federation, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Kazakhstan, and Estonia. These include open lumbago. The Red Book prohibits the destruction of the population of a rare plant that is threatened with extinction.

The following types of backache are known: Alpine, Ayan, spring, mountain, yellowing, golden, bell-shaped, Crimean, meadow, ordinary and many others. Main colors: white, yellow, red, blue-violet, lilac.

Favorable natural conditions for open lumbago

Open backache, the photo of which is presented below, has a fairly wide range of distribution. The spring plant feels equally good both in a moderately humid climate and in more arid places. Delicate purple flowers sprout not only on rich soils, but can also be content with poor, unmoistened soils. Particularly sensitive to light and especially in need of sunlight in the spring, during the flowering period.

Botanical description of sleep grass

Pulsatillaopen, or sleep grass, reaches a height of 7-15 to 40-50 centimeters, depending on environmental conditions. Like other species, the stems are hairy. The pubescent leaves are long, palmately dissected, thrown out only after flowering. Prior to this, a large blue-violet flower up to 8 centimeters in diameter rises above the grass on an erect stem.

Open backache forms low, well-developed bushes, on which up to 50 six-petal flowers can bloom at the same time. Flowering time falls on April-May and lasts for 20-25 days. The herbaceous plant reproduces in most cases by seeds, although cases of vegetative propagation have been observed. A characteristic feature is early flowering and early death of the generative parts, although the leaves continue to vegetate all autumn, until the onset of winter cold.

High seed germination persists for two years, and then fades somewhat. Sleep-grass cotyledons are elongated, saturated dark green in color, on small, partially fused petioles. They remain until late autumn. As the plant develops, the first lower three-lobed leaves with noticeable venation appear first, which are slightly covered with long whitish hairs. The upper leaves appear later, forming a rosette, and are abundantly pubescent, due to which the open lumbago - sleep-grass - seems fluffy. It is interesting that during the winter the plants remain with green leaves, but all life processes slow down.

Pulsatilla open:medicinal properties

First of all, let's say that this is a poisonous herb, but all of its green aerial part is used to prepare medicines for various purposes. The value of the plant lies in the fact that even dried it contains a large amount of resins, tannins and saponins. Freshly cut sleep-grass is rich in addition to everything with alkaloids - anemonin and ranunculin.

Use in traditional medicine

Due to its unique composition, the open lumbago, or sleep grass, has been widely used in folk medicine. The Red Book, where it was listed not so long ago, limits its collection. Basically, the herbaceous plant is used as a hypnotic and sedative. But this is not the only direction. Also, sleep-grass has a powerful bactericidal, antifungal and expectorant effect.

This type of lumbago has an antipyretic and diuretic effect. In traditional medicine recipes, grass is used to warm diseased limb joints over brewed herbs. Turchaninov's backache, which grows in Transbaikalia, as well as Dahurian, which can be found in Primorye and the Amur region, is used to treat pustular infections, as an analgesic, distraction, and to restore strength when the body is depleted.

The open lumbago is suitable for rubbing the squeezed green juice on inflamed rheumatic joints. Still fresh juice heals from glaucoma. Another species is the drooping lumbago, growing in the east of the country,found its use in Chinese medicine. Decoctions of mature rhizomes are used as a hemostatic and astringent.

Naturally, before using the miraculous properties of lumbago, you need to get professional advice from a doctor. There are certain contraindications associated with the fact that the plant is poisonous. In particular, in the presence of diseases such as gastritis and other pathologies of the gastrointestinal tract, nephritis. Medicinal collection is carried out during the flowering period of sleep-grass, which lasts from April to May.

Since all types of lumbago have an incredibly attractive appearance, they look organic in group landscape plantings and will be an excellent decoration for lawns, alpine slides and park areas. And for those who wish to dig up for their garden a rare and forbidden wild-growing instance of the open flower, the information that adult lumbago cannot tolerate replanting will be useful.