TRIFLATED WATCH (trifol, water shamrock)
Perennial herbaceous plant up to 20-30 cm tall. The rhizome is long, creeping, green, knotty, spongy inside. Adventitious roots, sparse, long. Stems in the amount of 3-5 emerge from the rising top of the rhizome. Leaves alternate, basal long-petiolate, trifoliate, leaflets on short petioles. The flowers are white, 4-5-membered, collected in a brush emerging from the rhizome. The fruit is a single-celled capsule. Blooms in May-June.
It occurs in many areas of the former USSR, sometimes forms dense thickets, especially on peat soils and waterlogged lakes, along the banks of rivers, ponds and ditches.
Medicinal raw materials are leaves collected during the flowering period, dried in the shade or in a ventilated room. Storage period 2 years. The taste is very bitter.
The leaves contain bitter glycosides (meniangin, meliatin), gentianin alkaloid, dyes, rutin, hyperosides, tannins, vitamin C.
Fatty oil, consisting of glycerides, palmitic and other acids, choline, resins and iodine, was found in the grass.
An aqueous infusion of the leaves (1:10) and an alcoholic tincture are used as bitters to improve appetite, increase the secretion of the digestive glands; as a means of improving the peristalsis of the stomach and intestines, as a laxative and choleretic (with low acidity), causing the release of gastric juice and improving digestion.
In folk medicine, in addition, the leaves of this plant are used for pulmonary tuberculosis, febrile conditions and as an antihelminthic, for hemorrhoids (with bleeding), diseases of the liver and gallbladder as a choleretic agent (especially for gallstone disease); due to the fact that the leaves contain vitamin C, they are recommended for scurvy.
As a means of raising the general tone of the body, this plant is also effective in pulmonary tuberculosis, if the condition of long-term and regular use in the form of a decoction or powder is observed. This plant is also used in the form of enemas for chronic constipation. In the form of an infusion of leaves – for tuberculosis, edema, anemia and inflammation of the joints.
Application
Decoction: 10 g per 200 ml; use 1 tbsp. spoon before meals to increase appetite or pour 2 teaspoons of grass with a glass of boiling water, insist for 60 minutes, strain, take 1/4 cup half an hour before meals (also to increase appetite) with stomach achylia, etc.
For enemas – dilute this decoction one and a half times.
Powder: 1-2 g three to four times daily before meals.
Infusion of leaves: 5-South in a glass of water with low acidity of the stomach, insist 8 hours.