Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale L.)

Dandelion officinalis is a perennial herb from the Compositae family. Other names: kulbaba, spurge, wasteland, Jewish hat, tooth root, cotton grass, oil flower, cow flower, March bush, milky flower, light, field chicory, dandelion, grandmother, podoynichki, milkman, duan, fluff.

Description:

Perennial herbaceous plant with taproot. The leaves are numerous, pressed to the soil, ascending or erect, all collected in a basal rosette, mostly pectinate-pinnate with downward facing lobes, with a larger spear-shaped terminal lobe, narrowed to the base into a winged petiole (less often the leaves are whole, lanceolate). The flower arrow is mostly one, sometimes there are several, thick, hollow inside, in the upper part (during flowering) cobwebby-pubescent. All flowers are reed, bright yellow, collected in large flower baskets, surrounded by a wrapper of numerous gray-green leaves, the outer leaflets of the wrapper are usually bent down. Hemicarps are oblong-obovate with numerous longitudinal ribs, with a thin long nose bearing a white crest. The whole plant contains milky sap.

Harvesting, description of raw materials:

For medicinal purposes, dandelion root is used – Radix Taraxaci, which is harvested in the fall. The roots are dug up, washed in water, the root neck is cut off and dried before drying until the milky juice ceases to stand out from the cuts. Air dry or tumble dry. To obtain an extract, the roots with leaves are collected in the spring before the flowering of the dandelion. The raw material consists of taproot, simple, less often slightly branched dandelion roots. They are longitudinally wrinkled, often spirally twisted, brittle, 10-15 cm long, 0.3-1.5 cm thick. Numerous gray groups of lactifers are visible on the transverse section and in the break in the wide grayish-white bark (under a magnifying glass); yellow wood. There is no smell, the taste is bitter-sweet. Untimely collected roots are lightweight, flabby, with easily lagging bark.

Contains active substances:

Dandelion roots contain triterpene compounds (taraxerol, taraxasterol, etc.), sterols (sitosterol and stigmasterol), taraxol, inulin, etc.

Medicinal use:

In medicine, common dandelion is used as an appetite stimulant and improves digestion for constipation and as a gastric remedy. In folk medicine, tincture of dandelion roots in vodka is drunk for abdominal pain, sexually transmitted diseases, and lotions are made for eczema. An aqueous decoction of the whole plant is drunk to prevent habitual miscarriages, with pulmonary tuberculosis, fright; a decoction of dandelion herb, and even better, a decoction of dandelion flowers is drunk for liver disease, jaundice; tincture of dandelion flowers on vodka is used for rheumatism; A decoction of flowers is drunk for high blood pressure, insomnia, hemorrhoids, one drop of dandelion milky juice is instilled into the eyes for trachoma, it is used as a laxative, for gastric diseases, warts are removed with dandelion juice, dandelion is also used for fever, for consumption.