leaf cranberry (Oxycoccus quadripetalus L.)

The four-leaf cranberry is a shrub from the Cowberry family (Vacciniaceae). Other names: Swamp cranberry

Description:

Evergreen small shrub, with creeping thin stems. The branches are thin, ascending, the leaves are wintering, leathery, with curled edges, bright green above, shiny, gray-gray below from a wax coating, oblong-ovate or elliptical, pointed at the apex, on very short petioles. Flowers on long short fluffy pedicels, drooping, collected 1-4 at the ends of the branches. Corolla four-parted, dark pink with petals turned to the base of the flower, 8 stamens, with short, expanded woolly filaments at the base, lower ovary. The fruit is a dark red, rather large, round, sometimes pear-shaped berry. It blooms in May-June, the berries ripen at the end of September and remain for the winter. Cranberries grow on raised sphagnum bogs, in pine forests with sphagnum cover.

Workpiece:

Ripe cranberries are harvested all autumn before snow and early spring, they are used fresh.

Contains active substances:

Cranberries contain from 2-5% organic acids (citric, benzoic, quinic, etc.), sugars, pectin and dyes, vaccinia glycoside and vitamin C.

Medicinal use:

Cranberries are used to prepare cranberry extract – Extactum Oxycocci, used as a thirst quencher for febrile diseases, and as a vitamin. In folk medicine, cranberries are eaten with high blood pressure, leaves for shortness of breath, berries and leaves for low acidity of the stomach, berry juice is used with fever.