Description:
A tree of the first magnitude, reaching 30-35 m in height, 1-2 m in diameter and surviving up to 200-300 years. The crown is spreading, strongly branched, the trunk is powerful, with growths in the lower part, the roots are long (up to 12 m in length). The bark is light gray, almost black in old trees, cracked. The buds are large, oblong-ovate, pointed, glabrous, covered with fragrant resin. Leaves on long petioles, glabrous, in youth thin, soft, with a resinous smell, adult leaves are dense, hard, green above, lighter below, triangular-ovate with an elongated apex, glandular-serrated at the edges with curved teeth and with an outstanding network of veins . Earrings within 2-3 cm in length, curved, are found before leaves; fruit earrings lengthen up to 12 cm; stamens many, with white filaments and purple anthers; ovary globose, style short, stigmas are yellow. Blossoms in April-May, bears fruit in May-June. Poplar grows wildly in river valleys – in floodplain oak forests, on coastal slopes, in terraced groves. The plant is often cultivated. For the procurement of raw materials, it is more convenient to use cultivated plantations of black poplar.
Harvesting, description of raw materials:
In medicine, poplar leaf buds are used – Gemmae Populi, which are collected at the beginning of the flowering of the tree. They are cut off by hand, separated from the branches, and dried in the shade in the air or in ovens at a moderate temperature (30-35 degrees Celsius). The raw material consists of buds 1.5-2 cm long, 4-6 mm in diameter. The color is greenish or brownish-yellow, the smell is peculiar, resinous-balsamic, the taste is bitter.
Contains active substances:
Poplar buds contain essential oil, glycosides populin and salicin, malic and gallic acids.
Medicinal use:
They are used in medicine in the form of infusions for burns, gout, rheumatism, hemorrhoids and as a remedy for hair growth. The glycoside salicin has an antipyretic effect. Currently, kidneys are of limited use. In perfumery, essential oil from the buds is used as a fragrance and odor fixative in the manufacture of toilet soap. In folk medicine, buds or freshly blossoming sticky leaves are infused with vodka, or boiled, or simply rubbed with oil, fresh fat and applied to abscesses, cuts, boils . Kidney tincture on vodka is drunk for pulmonary tuberculosis, for stomach pains, fatigue, mixed with other herbs for cancer. It is used as a gastric, on wounds, from bleeding and rheumatism.