Dahurian rhododendron (maralnik)

Name: Dahurian rhododendron (maralnik)

RHODODENDRON DAUR (maralnik)

 

Shrub up to 4 m tall with dark brown bark. Young branches, bud scales and leaves are covered on both sides with large flat yellowish glands. The leaves are smooth, dark green above, paler or reddish below. Flowers solitary or collected in 2-3, on short fluffy pedicels, with a purple-pink wide funnel-shaped corolla.

Distributed in Eastern Siberia, the basin of the upper and middle Lena and the Far East. It grows in pine-leaved forests, mainly on the northern and north-western slopes, on moist gravelly soils.

Medicinal raw materials are flowering branches, leaves, roots. The plant contains essential oil, tannins of the pyrocatechin group (5.5%), ericoline, ascorbic acid, phytoncides and other substances.

The prostocidal activity of the juice of the leaves and roots of Daurian rhododendron has been established. Alcohol extracts were tested for bactericidal activity against a number of viruses – enterotyphoid, dysentery, pyogenic. It turned out that 8% and 10% alcohol extracts have the highest bactericidal activity, which have a detrimental effect even on the causative agents of especially dangerous infections – the plague microbe, Vibrio cholerae and brucellosis bacteria.

In folk medicine, it is used to treat gastrointestinal diseases, colds, rheumatism, as a powerful wound healing and anti-inflammatory agent.

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