spotted hemlock (Sonium maculatum) and poisonous hemlock (Cicuta virosa)); heather family (Erisaceae); swamp common gourd
In the marshy pine forests, during the collection of bilberry, blueberries, lingonberries, and cranberries in the swamps, the pickers sometimes get dizzy, feel nauseous and even vomit. Let the reader forgive us for unappetizing details, but it is so. The culprit is not berries, most often blueberries and blackberries, but the essential oils of a plant that grows very close by and usually does not attract attention. Who is this stranger? Bogno ordinary, common plant in the swamps of the European and Asian parts of Russia.
It is an evergreen, squat, thick branched bush 40-130 cm tall. The young shoots of the plant have reddish pubescence. The leaves are leathery, alternate, short-petioled, linear, somewhat reminiscent of needles. Above they are dark green, naked, and below – pubescent. The flowers are bisexual, regular, whitish, pink or yellowish-white, on long sticky peduncles, collected in apical umbrella-like shields. The fruit is a box. It blooms in June-July. It grows on mountain swamps, in wet pines, fir groves and pine forests. In the taiga, it often occurs in swamps with larch growth and in lingonberry cedars. In Ukraine, it grows scattered in Polissia, occasionally in Prykarpattia and in the Carpathians in swampy and damp pine, less often in oak-pine forests, in peat bogs.
For medicinal purposes, one-year shoots of the bog are collected during the ripening of the fruits. Raw materials are dried under shelter in the air or in dryers at a temperature of up to 40 °C. Store in a dry, cool place for 2-3 years. Ready-made herbs are sold in pharmacies.
The range of action of ordinary mud products is very wide. They have expectorant, antispasmodic, diuretic, diaphoretic, disinfectant and sedative properties. They have a narcotic effect. Dilate blood vessels and lower blood pressure.
The drugs are usually prescribed internally in the form of an infusion as an expectorant and antitussive agent for acute bronchitis, tracheitis, laryngitis, whooping cough, bronchial asthma. Mud infusion is also effective for spastic enterocolitis. In gynecology, plant products are used to increase the tone of the uterus.
Folk medicine uses mud infusions for pulmonary tuberculosis, rheumatism, gout, diabetes, dysentery, eczema and various rashes on the body. Externally, an infusion of the herb is prescribed for insect bites, edema, frostbite, for the treatment of bruises, various wounds, and also for bruised limbs to increase blood circulation. An extract or decoction of the herb is instilled in the nose for colds and flu. Patients with bronchial asthma are recommended to keep a small amount of bog grass in the bedroom to prevent asthma attacks.
The pharmaceutical industry produces a product from the swamp grass – ice cream.
It should always be remembered that the fresh plant and medicinal raw materials prepared from it have toxic properties. An overdose of bog products causes excitement, and in severe cases, depression of the central nervous system.
People have long used the plant as an effective insecticide to combat household insects.
Herbal infusion. 2 tablespoons of raw material per 200 ml of boiling water. The infusion is drunk warm for 1/4 cup 2-3 times a day.
Napar (external). 1 part of fresh flowers and herbs to 9 parts of olive or sunflower oil. Insist for 12 hours. in the oven at a temperature of 60-90 °C. It is instilled into the nose for colds and flu, rubbed into the skin for rheumatism and gout.