An annual herbaceous plant up to 70 cm high. The root is taproot, strongly branched at the root collar and slightly branched deeper. Stem erect, reddish, branching at the top. The leaves are entire, alternate, triangular, with an arrow-shaped base and membranous bell at the base of the petioles of the lower leaves, the upper leaves are sessile. Flowers with a simple perianth, pink, five-parted. Stamens 8, pistil 1 with three columns. In different flowers, stamens and columns of different lengths. Inflorescences are fragrant brushes. The fruit is a trihedral nut. Flowering in July, fruiting in August.
It is cultivated in the middle zone of the European part of Russia, in Ukraine, in Belarus.
Medicinal raw materials are the tops of flowering leafy stems – grass and seeds. Raw materials are collected during flowering, seeds – as they mature. Raw materials are dried in the air, in the shade or dryers, at a temperature of 30-40 degrees.
The finished raw material is green grass with the smell of fresh hay. Storage period 1 year.
The herb contains: glycoside rutin (3-rhamnoglucoside quercetin), chlorogenic, gallic, protocatechinic and caffeic acids. The seeds contain starch (up to 67%), fatty oils, citric, malic acids. Fagopyrin was isolated from the flowers.
Rutin, urutin, rutamium products are produced from leaves and flowers. Rutin belongs to the vitamin P group (improves the fragility and permeability of capillaries). It is used for the same indications as vitamin P: for the treatment of hypo- and avitaminosis P, for the treatment and prevention of hemorrhage in the brain, heart, retina, with a tendency to hemorrhages in the skin and mucous membranes (hemorrhagic diathesis), with hypertension together with products that reduce blood pressure, in the treatment of rheumatism, scarlet fever, measles, typhus, also for the prevention and treatment of vascular lesions associated with the use of anticoagulants (dicumarin), salicylates, arsenic compounds, X-ray and radiotherapy and radiation sickness .
Doses and duration of treatment are individual and depend on the clinical picture and the results of determining capillary permeability. Simultaneously with the routine, it is recommended to prescribe ascorbic acid (50 mg each).
In folk medicine, flowers, leaves and flour sifted through a fine sieve are used.
A decoction of flowers (10 g per 200 ml) is drunk as a tea without dosage when coughing. Many people recommend drinking this tea, and with sclerosis of blood vessels with high blood pressure, sometimes cudweed grass is added to tea as a remedy that calms the nervous system and lowers blood pressure. Dry buckwheat flour, sifted through a sieve, is recommended as baby powder. Peeled fruits (buckwheat) due to the content of iron, calcium, phosphorus, citric and malic acids, as well as vitamins Bj, B2 and proteins easily absorbed by the body, are a valuable dietary product.
Application
30-40 g insist in 1 liter of boiling water, take 1/2 cup 3-4 times every day (expectorant).