Name: Aloe arborescens – aloe arborescens (growing and cultivation)
Aloe arborescens ( Scarlet tree ) Aloe arborescens Mill.
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Synonyms: agave, rannik.
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Description.Perennial, evergreen, succulent plant from the lily family (Liliaceae), reaching a height of 4 m in South Africa. The root is uriculate, cylindrical, branched. The stem is short, strongly branched, forms a significant number of lateral shoots. The leaves are large, fleshy, juicy, xiphoid, up to 60 cm long, clustered in the form of a rosette in the upper part of the stems, amplexicaul, grayish-gray in color, up to 1215 mm thick, with spiny edges and spines (teeth) on the sides. In room culture, the leaves, like the plant itself, are smaller. The central flower arrow has an inflorescence brush of yellow-red or yellow flowers up to 40 mm long. The fruit is a cylindrical capsule, greenish-brown in color, the seeds are grayish-black, small and numerous. Flowering indoors is very rare,
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Medicinal raw materials: fresh leaves and juice obtained from them.
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biological features . Aloe is a tree-like heat-loving plant that freezes already at a temperature of 2 ° C. It has adapted to the conditions of deserts and semi-deserts. With a large drought, aloe forms large fleshy leaves with a mucous middle, which contributes to the accumulation of a large amount of moisture.
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Habitat. It grows in places with a high percentage of iron in the sand, which lies on the plane of the desert, where in the summer the soil dries up so much that it becomes hard as a brick.
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Distribution . Under natural conditions, it grows in southern Africa in the Karoo desert, where the main preparations of aloe leaves are produced to extract sabur from them (sabur is the juice evaporated to dryness from aloe leaves).
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In the USSR, it is widely distributed in room culture.
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Under production conditions, we cultivate aloe in the Transcaucasus and Central Asia.
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Composition of active substances. Aloe arborescens and other species used in medical practice contain complex, bitter-tasting glycosidic compounds, the so-called glycosides (and their mixture is called aloins). When splitting them, arabinose and aloe-emodin-anthraquinone or trioxymethylanthraquinone appear. In addition, aloe juice contains organic acids (oxalic, aloethic, etc.), also resins, tannins, essential oils, vitamin C, carotene, etc.
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Application. The healing properties of aloe and the sabura obtained from its leaves have been known since the time of Dioscorides, Pliny and Celsius, the ancient Greeks, Romans and Arabs knew about them. The latter believed that aloe is a symbol of patience, because it does not fade for a long time (patience in Arabic means “sabr”, hence the name “sabur”). Aloe is widely used both in scientific and traditional medicine, as well as in veterinary medicine.
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In the USSR, an effective method for extracting sabur from the leaves of a plant has been developed: the leaves are first slightly cut on the side at the points where they leave the stems, and then plucked along with the vagina, which makes it possible to avoid loss of juice.
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Academician V.P. Filatov found that living tissue, both animal and plant, separated from a living organism and placed in unfavorable conditions in a dark room with a low (up to + 3 ° C) temperature and kept there for 2025 days, undergoes biological changes and produces in itself special substances (the so-called biogenic stimulants), which excite the fading life processes in the tissue. An extract made from aloe leaves according to the method of V.P. Filatov is used for subcutaneous injections every day or every other day (3040 sessions in total), 14 ml in the treatment of eye diseases, as well as peptic ulcer of the stomach and duodenum.
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Fresh aloe juice is preserved with a 20% alcohol solution and used for certain diseases of the gastrointestinal tract (typhoid fever, dysentery, chronic constipation, gastritis) at a dose of one to two teaspoons three times every day half an hour before meals. You can use dry sabur extract (in pills of 0.1 g), about twice as active as simple sabur, as well as tincture (1020 drops before meals three times every day).
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Aloe juice and sabur have long been used as a laxative. In large doses (0.51.0 g), the products have a powerful laxative effect, in small doses (0.050.2 g) it is a mild laxative and tonic that increases appetite and stimulates the digestive activity of the stomach. Sabur tincture, obtained by extracting a dry extract with 40% alcohol, is administered orally for duodenal ulcers, liver diseases, etc.
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Aloe syrup with iron is used in the treatment of anemia.
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For diseases of the larynx and pharynx, rinse your mouth with a 50% aqueous solution of aloe juice or drink fresh juice three times a day for a teaspoon with milk.
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As an external agent, aloe juice, which has bactericidal properties, is used in the treatment of chronic wounds, burns, purulent inflammation of the eyes or cataracts (in the form of lotions).
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The Pharmacological Committee of the USSR Ministry of Health recommended aloe emulsion as a prophylactic and therapeutic agent for skin lesions due to radiation therapy, also for the treatment of II and III degree burns; in gynecological practice for the treatment of diseases of the external female genital organs; in subacute and acute inflammatory processes of the skin (dermatitis, eczema, psoriasis-scaly lichen, lichen planus, etc.) (Obukhov, 1965).
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For prophylactic purposes, the emulsion should be applied to the skin after each irradiation throughout the course (45 days). The emulsion is applied in a thin layer on the diseased surface two to three times a day and covered with a gauze cloth.
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It should be noted that in some cases the use of aloe is contraindicated. So, juice from fresh leaves should not be used for hemorrhoids, inflammation of the kidneys, uterine bleeding, excessive menstruation, pregnancy and diseases of the cardiovascular system in the stage of decompensation. Therefore, aloe products should only be used with the permission of a doctor.
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Agrotechnics of cultivation. Site selection. For cultivation in the field, aloe requires fertile and cultivated soils with a neutral or slightly acidic reaction. Heavy soils that float and waterlogged areas are not suitable. Row crops and grasses sown on green mass are considered the best predecessors.
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Soil tillage . Plowing of the soil for field crops is carried out in early spring to a depth of 2022 cm. 1520 days before planting, the field is plowed to a depth of 1215 cm with simultaneous harrowing. Before planting, the plot is cultivated and harrowed again.
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Application of fertilizers . Organic fertilizers are applied under the main plowing at the rate of 3040 t/ha. At the same time, mineral fertilizers are also applied: phosphate fertilizers at 1.52.0 centners per hectare and potash fertilizers at 11.2 centners per hectare.
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Reproduction . For reproduction, young shoots are taken, which develop from the dormant buds of the lower parts of the stems, as well as the tops of the stems from adult plants, and root them in August September in greenhouses with highly fertile soil.
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Three types of planting material are used for growing aloe in the field: rooted seedlings after growing them to a height of 816 cm; single-stemmed plants that were in operation, or tops rooted from them; multi-stemmed leafy plants. Row spacing should be 20-30 cm for rooted seedlings and 3540 cm for foliar single-stemmed plants with a row spacing of 70 cm in both cases, and for multi-stemmed leaf plants 50 cm in rows with a row spacing of 100 cm.
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Depending on local conditions, seedlings are planted on the plantation in April-May.
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Care of plantations consists in loosening row-spacings and weeding.
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Harvesting is carried out selectively: first, the lower and middle most developed leaves are cut off at least 15 cm long, leaving 89 upper leaves on the plants. The harvested leaves are immediately packed in boxes with ventilation holes 2330 cm high and sent to the processing plant. Freshly picked and packed leaves should be on the way for no more than a day.
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The average yield of fresh leaves, depending on the conditions of agricultural technology, the quality of planting material and other conditions, can vary from 5 to 20 t/ha. (Plants can produce 10 leaves throughout the summer.)
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In addition to the main, selective harvesting of leaves from leaf plantations during the summer, two or three more times, side shoots (so-called children) are harvested for planting new plantations. This makes it possible to obtain 200,400,000 side shoots per hectare and helps to avoid weakening the growth of marketable leaves on the main stem.
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quality requirements . In accordance with the State Pharmacopoeia IX, ready-made aloe raw materials should be pieces of various sizes and shapes, dark brown in color, with an unpleasant odor and a bitter taste. Allowed: moisture 10%; ash 4; extractive substances not less than 50%. Sabur should be highly soluble in hot alcohol, insoluble in chloroform and poorly soluble in water.