HONESKY ALTAI (blue)
Low shrub 1-1.5 m high with brownish-gray bast bark. Young shoots are reddish in color. The leaves are entire, oval-elliptical, on short petioles. Flowers are pale yellow. Fruits – oval or ovoid berries growing at the ends of fruitful twigs, not often doubled, black-blue or bluish from a wax coating, sweet-sour, with a bitter taste. Blooms in June. The fruits ripen in July-August.
It grows in dark coniferous, rarely deciduous forests, along their edges. Medicinal raw materials are fruits, bark, branches. Berries contain a significant amount of ascorbic acid, flavone and tannins, sugars, anthocyanins (dark red coloring matter).
Honeysuckle preparations have astringent, diuretic, anti-inflammatory action. A decoction of branches and bark is drunk against dropsy. Fresh berries are recommended for hypertension, malaria, gastrointestinal disorders and anemia.
It is highly valued by traditional medicine. In the Far East, including Kamchatka, edible honeysuckle is common, a shrub similar to the previous species, with fruits almost without bitterness, reminiscent of blueberries. The population has long considered it an antiscorbutic and the best medicine for dropsy.