Stonecrop (hare cabbage)

Perennial small plant 5-10 cm high with weak, unthickened fleshy roots, weak recumbent or ascending stems. The leaves are small, juicy, ovate or rounded, sessile, cranially contiguous or spaced. The flowers are dark, with sharp petals, collected in a spreading inflorescence. Blooms from June to September.

Stonecrop is a fairly traditional plant in all areas. It occurs on dry sandy places, dry slopes, glades, on stony and calcareous soils.

Medicinal raw material is a herb collected during flowering and dried in the shade in the air or in dryers. Fresh grass juice is also used – which is very poisonous.

Stonecrop grass contains organic acids (lactic, oxalic, malic, succinic, ascorbic, tannic, etc.), as well as some sugary substances (sedoheptose), flavones and alkaloid-sedamine.

The local effect of stonecrop is sometimes irritating, the resorptive effect is accompanied by vasoconstriction, increased intestinal motility, there are also indications of a stimulating effect on the body.

It has been established that, when taken orally, stonecrop products have a stimulating effect, activate respiration and increase blood pressure, causing constriction of blood vessels. An infusion of herbs is recommended for all kinds of diseases of the gastrointestinal tract, as a laxative, tonic, for dropsy and malaria. The diuretic effect is due to flavonoids. For epilepsy, take powder from dry leaves (about 1 g – at the tip of a knife – with sugar 3 times every day for 3 months). For bruises, an ointment is used from grass boiled with lard (internal fat). Grass juice is used to treat contaminated wounds, herbal poultices are considered a remedy for warts and calluses. Freshly ground grass is applied to cancerous tumors.

In folk medicine, sedum is brewed as tea and drunk for pains of the heart, stomach, liver diseases, catarrh of the upper respiratory tract, furunkelosis, diathesis; sedum products are used for epilepsy, jaundice, anemia, childhood eczema, skin tuberculosis in babies; eat grass (preferably grass powder) with bread for malaria; ointment prepared from fresh grass with pork fat is used for bone fractures, lichen; the same ointment with the addition of camphor is used for various types of tumors; freckles are smeared with juice; they drink a decoction for malaria, an ointment from the grass is applied to calluses, warts, wounds and ulcers.

Used in homeopathy.

Application

Decoction 1: 3 g per 200 ml; half a glass 3 times every day, for malaria in the intervals between attacks of the disease.

Decoction 2: 20 g per 200 ml; 1 st. spoon 3 times every day with low blood pressure.

The ointment can be made either from a condensed decoction or from grass powder: 1 part grass powder to 4 parts base (butter or petroleum jelly).

In Bulgarian folk medicine, stonecrop is used as an analgesic for hemorrhoids and soothing for irritation of the mucous membrane of the anus and itching in this area, also for scurvy, atherosclerosis, epilepsy, gruel from grass – for poultices in neoplasms.

When used externally, it sometimes causes irritation – this must be taken into account!

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