Blue cornflower – centaurea cyanus l.
Popular names: field cornflower, sowing cornflower, cornflowers, cornflowers, cyanosis, cyanosis, cyanosis-blue flower, blue flowers.
Botanical characteristic. Compositae family. An annual herbaceous plant up to 60 cm high. The stem is straight, branched, grayish-woolly felty. The leaves are alternate, entire, lanceolate-linear, the lower leaves are non-striate, dying off by the time of flowering. Flower baskets are bell-shaped, solitary, located at the ends of stems and branches, marginal flowers are funnel-shaped, blue. Blossoms in June – July, bears fruit in August.
Spreading. It occurs as a weed plant in crops of rye, wheat and other crops, in fallows, in gardens and orchards in the European part of the USSR (except the Far North), in the Urals, in the Crimea, in the Caucasus.
Medicinal raw materials. Collected during the period of full flowering blue or blue flowers. A flower basket is plucked, from which only marginal funnel-shaped blue flowers (“petals”) are plucked. They are scattered on paper in a loose thin layer and immediately dried in a dark, well-ventilated room, often turning over.
Chemical composition. The flowers of the plant contain glycosides (centaurin, chicory, cynarin), dyes, flavonoids, mineral salts and other substances.
Pharmacological properties and Application. An infusion of the flowers of the plant is used as a mild diuretic and choleretic agent. They are part of the diuretic tea and some diuretic fees. In folk veterinary medicine, the infusion is recommended as an antipyretic for fevers, diseases of the kidneys and bladder, and in the form of lotions for some eye diseases. Crushed leaves are applied to wounds to speed up their healing.
An infusion of plant flowers is used in complex therapy for chronic inflammatory diseases of the kidneys and urinary tract, for edema of renal and cardiovascular origin; with urolithiasis, pyelitis, cystitis, with diseases of the liver and biliary tract, which are accompanied by impaired bile secretion.
The presence of bitterness in the plant determines its use in order to improve the function of digestion.