Name: Cornflower blue
VOLASHKA BLUE –
Centaurea cyanus L.
The Asteraceae family is Asteraceae, or Compositae
What does a cornflower look like? Annual herbaceous gray-green fluffy plant 30-60 cm tall. Its stem is branched, directed upwards. The leaves are lanceolate-linear, the lower ones are somewhat lobed, the upper ones are entire. Baskets are apical, on long peduncles. Marginal flowers five-toothed, funnel-shaped, blue or, less often, white, pink; middle ones are tubular, purple. Blooms in May – August.
Where does it grow? Throughout the territory of Ukraine, but in the south it is less common – among crops of rye and other grain crops as a weed. Sometimes it is grown in flower gardens.
What and when are collected? Marginal flowers, plucking them from the baskets, during the flowering of the plant. They are quickly dried in the shade in a draft on dicta or paper (they contain the dye cyanine, bitter glycoside centaurine – knicin, sugars, mucilage, tannins, pelargonin, mineral (mainly) magnesium and potassium salts.
When is it used? The plant is used as an antispasmodic, anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, diuretic and choleretic agent. It is used for diseases of the kidneys and gall bladder, for dropsy, jaundice, for colds and malaria, as an antipyretic; together with fish oil or slightly fried liver – with chicken blindness; indigestion of the stomach (bitterness of knitsin).
Used in the form of tea. For 1 cup of boiling water, take 1 teaspoon of the marginal flowers of cornflower , infuse for 30 minutes and drink 0.25 cups three times a day. In case of retention of urine due to inflammatory processes in the genitourinary organs, take 4 tablespoons of a mixture of cornflower petals, grassy elder bark, corn stalks (hairs), milk thistle leaves, horsetail grass, naked horsetail grass and birch buds in a ratio of 1:1.5:1 : : 1.5 : 0.5 : 1 : 1.5 per 1 liter of water, infuse overnight, boil for 7 minutes in the morning and drink hot during the day for 5 times.
Against furunculosis, a mixture of blue cornflower flowers , St. Nettle grass, marigold flowers, walnut leaves, horsetail grass, tricolor violet grass (pansy), sedum grass and veronica herb in a ratio of 1.5 : 1 : 1 : 1 : 1 is used. 2: 1.5: 1. Take 4 tablespoons per 1 liter of water and prepare in the same way as for urinary retention. The course of treatment is 6 weeks.
A steam of 1 teaspoon of marginal flowers of cornflower in 1 glass of boiling water is used to wash the eyes with conjunctivitis, barley on the eye; the steam filtered through wool is instilled in the eyes 4-5 drops three times a day. At the same time, aseptic conditions are strictly observed.
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