Curly Wolf (veterinary practice)

Volchets curly cnicus benedictus l.

 

Botanical characteristic. Compositae family. An annual or 2-year-old herbaceous plant. The stem is highly branched from the root, up to 40 cm high. Rod root. The whole plant is sticky from dense glandular pubescence. The leaves are oblong, almost all sessile, pinnately dissected, with large coarse veins. The flowers are tubular, small yellowish, collected in single baskets on the tops of branches and stems.

Blooms in June – August.

Spreading. It occurs in Central Asia and Transcaucasia, in the south of the European part of the USSR, not often in Ukraine. It grows in dry meadows and slopes among sparse shrubs, near housing, along roads, in crops.

Medicinal raw materials. The tops of the shoots (grass) are collected before or during the flowering period, several times during the summer. The grass is cut with secateurs, a knife, a sickle, tied into bundles and dried in a suspended state.

Chemical composition. Contains bitter glycosidic substance knitsin, mucus, tannin, resinous substances, gum, a small amount of essential oil.

pharmacological properties. The therapeutic effect of the plant is due to the presence of knitsin glycoside. The latter in therapeutic doses reflexively, through the receptors of the oral mucosa, stimulates the secretory and motor functions of the organs of the gastrointestinal tract. In large doses, the glycoside has a powerful irritant effect, causing vomiting and diarrhea.

Application. Used as bitterness to improve digestion, with digestive disorders (flatulence, constipation, ulcerative processes in the stomach and intestines, etc.), with liver diseases. Doses of grass inside: cattle 25-50 g, horses 10-25, small cattle 5-10, pigs 2-5 g.