GENTIA PULMONARY (blue St. John’s wort)
Perennial herbaceous plant up to 60 cm high with straight single or several simple, sometimes slightly branched, leafy stems. The leaves are opposite, narrow, linear, traditionally with one vein. The flowers are bright blue, large – funnel-bell-shaped with five short, acute-angled limb lobes, on short pedicels, traditionally one at the top of the stem and in the axils of the upper leaves. Blooms in July-August.
It grows in meadows, among shrubs, on the edges of forests.
It contains the glycoside gentiopicrin, the leaves are rich in vitamin C, the root contains hepcyamine.
In folk medicine, an aqueous decoction of the whole plant, collected during flowering, is taken with