Evergreen forked-branching plant 20-40 cm (sometimes up to 120 cm) tall. Root branching penetrates under the bark and into the wood of the host tree, forming numerous suction cups later in the day. The branches are green or brownish-green in the lower part, woody, jointed, glabrous, easily breaking at the nodes. The leaves are opposite, placed in pairs at the ends of the branches, leathery, thick, pale green, oblong, narrowed towards the base, obtuse at the apex, entire, 5-7 cm long, with parallel venation. The plant is dioecious: the flowers are unisexual, inconspicuous, yellowish-green, with a simple four-parted flower bed within, crowded with 3 shoots (rarely 5-6) at the ends. Staminate flowers are sessile; within their flower beds with a short tube and ovoid limb lobes, 4 stamens, without filaments. Pistillate flowers are smaller lateral – sessile; medium on a short leg; within a flower bed with four obtuse ovate lobes, a pistil with a semi-inferior single-celled ovary and a sessile one; thick, cushion-shaped stigma. The fruit is a false spherical juicy one-seeded berry, white when ripe, translucent. The seed is large, densely clothed with sticky, mucous pulp. Blossoms in March-April, fruits ripen in September-October.
White mistletoe is common in the southern regions of the European part of Russia. It occurs as a parasite on trees – more often fruit trees, birches and poplars, less often conifers, on oak.
Medicinal raw materials are young twigs and leaves collected in late autumn or winter. The plant is used in folk medicine.
Leaves and branches contain sugar, gum, starch, fatty oil, mineral salts and a sticky resinous substance – viscin, tannins, sanonine-like substances, oleic acid and glucosidic compounds, also choline derivatives. Rubber was found in the sticky pulp of the fruit. The leaves contain ascorbic acid, carotene.
Mistletoe has been used in medicine for a long time. Even Pliny, Paracelsus used it in the treatment of epilepsy, nervous diseases, colic, bleeding. Doctors of the 18th and 19th centuries prescribed mistletoe for dizziness, apoplexy, and hysteria.
Currently, in scientific medicine, mistletoe is used to treat the early stages of hypertension in the form of a thick extract from the leaves of mistletoe.
Studies have found that mistletoe lowers blood pressure, enhances the activity of the heart, dilates blood vessels, and reduces the excitability of the central nervous system.
In folk medicine, mistletoe is used internally in the form of tinctures and decoctions for epilepsy, hypochondria, hysteria; as an anticonvulsant, with atherosclerosis, headache; as a hemostatic agent – for uterine, pulmonary, hemorrhoidal, gastrointestinal bleeding. For stomach bleeding, mistletoe products work more effectively when mixed with horsetail herb.
Usually used mistletoe from birches. Water decoction is drunk with high blood pressure, headache, epilepsy. A decoction of mistletoe from hornbeam, oak, pine is used for heart disease, nervous diseases, pulmonary tuberculosis, cancer, tangles, asthma, rheumatism.
Tea from white mistletoe is drunk to raise the tone of life by weakened elderly people, and with dizziness – of any age.
Used mistletoe white from round worms. Outwardly decoctions of mistletoe are used in the form of lotions for chronic non-healing wounds, ulcers, abscesses; in the form of sitz baths for hemorrhoids.
Application
Tincture: 25%; 30 drops 3 times every day.
An infusion or decoction (35-40 g per 1 liter of water) of branches with leaves or berries is used inside Art. spoons for atherosclerosis, dizziness, headache, convulsions and bleeding – gastric, pulmonary, etc.
Light decoction: 15 g per 200 ml; 1 st. spoon 3 times every day, the application is the same.
Decoction-mixture for external use: 15 g of mistletoe herb and 10 g of yarrow, water pepper, oak bark, stinging nettle herb and deaf nettle flowers; mix and brew in a liter of boiling water.
Powder mixture: mistletoe leaf powder -0.5 g, mistletoe berries – 0.5 g, crushed valerian root powder – 1 g. The mixture is taken orally to remove round worms for 3 days. It is recommended to eat fresh grated carrots.