Borage – Boraginaceae.
Popular names: water springs, spotted grass, lung root.
Parts Used: Grass (without roots).
Pharmacy name: lungwort herb – Pulmonariae herba (formerly: Heiba Pulmonariae).
Botanical description. The horizontally branched rhizome is located at a depth of several centimeters. Soon after the snow melts, pubescent stems 10-30 cm high with sessile, elongated, coarsely pubescent, rough leaves develop from it. Flowers are located at the top of the stem, there are quite a few of them. At the very beginning of flowering, they are pinkish, later – blue. Lungwort blooms in March-April. Grows in shady deciduous forests, shrubs and hedgerows.
Collection and preparation. Flowering shoots are collected, cut off almost at the very ground, and hung to dry tied in bunches. You can also dry with artificial heating (up to 45 “C), if at the same time they are well ventilated.
Active ingredients: mucus, flavonoids, allantoin, silicic acid and other minerals, pyrrolizidine alkaloid.
Healing action and application. Based on the composition of the active ingredients, it can be assumed that lungwort has emollient properties (mucus), has a beneficial effect on connective tissue (silicic acid), and also softens the inflamed mucous membrane of the stomach and intestines, mouth and throat. Nevertheless, lungwort is not used less by scientific medicine. Most of the indications for the use of this medicinal plant are not considered by the German Public Health Service to be sufficiently substantiated. Very few galenic products contain lungwort.
Application in folk medicine. Another point of view is shared by traditional medicine, where lungwort tea is often recommended for sore throats, hoarseness, coughs, mucus in the throat, dysentery and diarrhea, as well as for diseases of the bladder.
- Tea from lungwort: 2 teaspoons of herbs are poured into 1/4 liter of boiling water, infused for 10 minutes and filtered. Drink 3 times every day for 1 cup of tea sweetened with honey. For diarrhea, unsweetened tea is used, it is also used for rinsing.
Note. In folk medicine, the use of lungwort has been practiced recently. In the classical herbalists of the Ancient World, we do not find lungwort, and therefore, medieval authors do not have it either. According to the doctrine of Paracelsus’s signatures (“Nature shows the general appearance of a plant for the treatment of which it can serve”), if you look closely at this plant, you can see that in the general appearance of leaves and flowers there is a hint of lung diseases.
Side effects are excluded even with prolonged use. But we do not give recommendations for use!