Name: Girchak shorst – mountaineer rough
Short girchak (Polygonum scabrum); hemorrhoid grass; mountaineer grungy
An annual herbaceous dark green plant of the buckwheat family. Stems 30-60 cm tall, straight, erect or decumbent, branched. The leaves are ovate-lanceolate or elongated-lanceolate, short-petioled, often blunt, with speckled glands from below, and a black crescent-shaped spot from above. Leaf sheaths are often slightly glandular, with small cilia on the edge. The flowers are bisexual, regular, on prominent peduncles, collected in spike-shaped inflorescences; perianth is greenish-white, covered with glands on top. Peduncles are densely covered with yellowish glands. The fruit is a nut. Blooms in June – October.
Spread. It grows in meadows, as a weed in fields and gardens, mainly in forest areas of Ukraine.
Procurement and storage . They use grass collected during the flowering of the plant. Dry under a tent, in an attic or in a well-ventilated room. Store in a dry place.
The plant is unofficial.
Chemical composition. The grass contains tannins (6%), oxymethylanthraquinone, gallic acid, leaves – ascorbic acid (up to 260 mg%).
Pharmacological properties and use. It has been experimentally proven that the plant exhibits antibacterial activity against Flexner’s dysentery bacillus. In some foreign countries, bitter gorse is used in scientific medicine as a hemostatic and laxative agent for hemorrhoids.