Name: Scotch pine – pine zvichayna (harvesting and storage)
Scots pine – Pinus syvestris L. The Ukrainian name is zvichayna pine, the popular name is pine.
Pine family – Pinaceae.
For therapeutic purposes, the kidneys are used.
It occurs everywhere in forest and forest-steppe regions (on the second river terraces), not often in the Steppe, also in the Carpathians (Gorgany) and the Crimean mountains. Forms pure and mixed (with oak, hornbeam, beech, less often other species) plantations on sand, sandy loam, loam, sometimes on Cretaceous deposits, etc. The existing pine forests are artificial plantations. The main preparations can be made in forest and partially forest-steppe regions.
Stocks of raw materials are large. Tens of tons of buds can be harvested annually during thinning in young plantings. Average annual harvesting of Scots pine buds in the republic in 1974-1976. amounted to 27.4 tons.
Scotch pine– an evergreen tree up to 30-40 m high and up to 1.5 m in diameter. The bark of young trees is reddish-brown, that of old trees is grayish-brown, fissured, yellowish on the branches. The needles are two in a bunch, light green, sometimes bluish, pointed. Gray-yellow microstrobiles (male cones) develop at the base of young long shoots in the axils of the covering leaves. At the ends of young shoots of the same trees, reddish oval Viennese cones are found, 5-6 mm long and 4 mm wide, on short stalks, consisting of covering scales, in the axils of which seed scales with ovules sit. Female cones after fertilization grow, reach 2.5-7 cm in length and 2-3 cm in width. In the first year they are green, in the second year they become woody and turn brown. Seeds 3-4 mm long, blackish or grayish with a wing. The cones mature in the second year.
Prepare the kidneys before they bloom (February-March). Crowns of buds with branches up to 3 mm long are cut off with secateurs from the tops of shoots of young trees (the older the tree, the smaller the buds).
Dry raw materials in attics, spreading a thin layer on cloth or paper and stirring frequently. You can not dry the kidneys in the oven, as the resin melts and evaporates, and the scales diverge in different directions.
According to GOST 8466-57, the raw material consists of “crowns” with 5-7 buds, the largest of which is in the center, or single buds covered with dry, spirally arranged, tightly pressed scales glued with resin. The buds are pinkish-brown on the outside, greenish at the break. The smell is fragrant, resinous. The taste is bitter. Humidity is not higher than 13%. Not more than (percent) is allowed in raw materials: other parts of pine (overgrown buds, stems longer than 2 cm) – 10, including needles – 0.5; crushed parts (passing through a sieve with a hole diameter of 3 mm) – 5, organic and mineral impurities – 0.5 each.
Raw materials are packed in plywood boxes weighing 25 kg. They are stored in packaged form in dry, well-ventilated rooms on racks or underwares in the group of essential oil raw materials. Storage period 2 years.
The kidneys contain resin, essential oil (which includes bornyl acetate, pinene, limonene), the bitter substance pinopicrin, tannins, vitamin C. They are used in infusion as an expectorant, diuretic and disinfectant, for diseases of the upper respiratory tract, for baths. The needles contain ascorbic acid, within 5% of tannins, alkaloids, essential oil, which includes pinene, limonene, borneol, bornyl acetate, cadinene, anthocyanin compounds, and is used to prepare vitamin drinks, chlorophyll-vitamin paste (used for burns, wounds, skin diseases).
Turpentine ordinary (purified resin) and turpentine are obtained from pine – local distractions; tar (a product of dry distillation of wood), which has an antiparasitic effect, coniferous extract for baths.