Name: Melilot officinalis – burkun likarsky (veterinary practice)
Sweet clover – melilotus officinalis (l.) Desr.
Popular names: yellow burkun, mole grass.
Botanical characteristic. Bean family. A biennial herbaceous plant with a fibrous root. The stem is branched woody green up to 100 cm high. The leaves are trifoliate, bluish-green, paler below. Flowers yellow fragrant.
Blooms in June – July (Fig. 18).
Spreading. It grows on fallows, along roads, in wastelands, less often in fields and meadows as a weed, in forest and forest-steppe regions of the European part of the USSR, in the Urals, in Siberia and Central Asia.
Medicinal raw materials. Collect the tops of the plant (grass) during flowering. To do this, cut off the leafy flowering tops and side flowers of the plant up to 30 cm long. Dry in the open air in the shade, under awnings or in well-ventilated areas. Raw materials are laid out in a thin layer and often turned over. Stored in paper-lined tin boxes.
Chemical composition. The herb of the plant contains coumarin, tannins, melitoside glycoside, melilotic acid, vitamin C, etc.
pharmacological properties. Infusion and decoction have expectorant, emollient, analgesic, wound-healing properties. Coumarin depresses the central nervous system, has anticonvulsant and narcotic effects. In large doses, sweet clover can cause poisoning: animals experience vomiting, anxiety, and even paralysis.
Application. Sweet clover is recommended as prescribed by a doctor for pain in the intestines and bladder, flatulence, increased excitability; poultices and herbal compresses – with abscesses, boils, hardening of the mammary glands. Daily dose: calves 2 g in the form of infusion (1:100).