Yellow stars (Gagea lutea); spring onion, yellow garlic; Lily family (Liliaceae); goose onion yellow
Often at the end of April at the beginning of May, usually in wet meadows and meadows, you can see scattered golden-yellow delicate flowers. These are blooming yellow stars, one of the earliest primroses. If you dig up the plant, you can see a small, elongated, egg-shaped, brownish-gray bulb. Star flowers are regular, bisexual, collected in a small umbrella-like inflorescence of 5-7, sometimes 10-12. In cloudy weather and at night, the flowers “disappear” — they close, and the green-yellow perianth masks them. The basal leaf of the plant is single, 6-12 mm wide, two more opposite narrow-lanceolate leaves with cobweb pubescence on the edges are located above. The fruit is a three-sided capsule that ripens in May-June. Common yellow stars in the middle zone of Russia not only in meadows, but also in light forests, as well as among thickets of shrubs.
Folk healers use fresh bulbs of the plant to prepare medicines. It is known that they contain essential oil, which includes sulfur. A decoction of bulbs is taken for bronchial asthma, dropsy, jaundice (hepatitis), they are crushed and applied to wounds to accelerate healing.
All parts of the plant can be eaten: young leaves and bulbs are added to spring salads and vegetable soups. Onions are also eaten baked and boiled, and in the past they were dried, ground and added to flour for baking bread.
Yellow stars are a valuable pollen carrier, so they are one of the most important primroses visited by bees. Flowers secrete little nectar: the plant’s honey productivity is only 8-12 kg from 1 hectare, but in the spring every drop of honey and every speck of pollen is precious to bees.