The coltsfoot plant is one of the widespread, widely known and popular, its appearance is familiar to almost everyone. Many owners of suburban areas struggle with it like a malicious weed, not realizing that they are destroying a useful medicinal plant. We offer to get acquainted with its medical properties, contraindications for use, as well as find out some interesting facts.
Description
The coltsfoot plant is a perennial representative of the family Asteraceae, a relative of a beautiful garden flower, aster. Indeed, if you look closely, the sunny yellow small flower of the plant is very similar to the beautiful red, pink or white head of an aster. Features of coltsfoot as a representative of the flora are as follows:
- Long creeping rhizome.
- There are two types of shoots. Flower-bearing plants are formed in early spring, their height is not more than 30 cm, at the end of each is a head - a flower. After flowering, these shoots die off immediately.
- Vegetative - the second type of shoot, leaves are located on them. They are formed some time after the completion of flowering.
- The sheets are very unusual, on the inside soft, pleasant to the touch, on the outside - smooth, cold. The parties refer respectively to “mother” and “stepmother”.
- The shape of the sheet is rounded, characteristic notches at the ends, the size depends on age. Mature leaves often reach 20 cm in diameter. Color - deep green.
- A flower is a basket of bright yellow color, reaches 2.5 cm in diameter. It is with its flowers that the coltsfoot and dandelion plants are very similar, but the second has a larger diameter.
- The fruit is the achene.
It is among the amazingly prolific, for a season, only one bush is able to produce almost 20 thousand seeds, which themselves have good germination.
Title
Consider why the plant was called coltsfoot. There are several sad legends explaining this strange name.
In ancient times, a man left the family for another woman, leaving his wife and daughter with beautiful golden hair. But the new wife, tormented by jealousy, decided to destroy the child, lured the girl to the precipice and threw her down. The mother, feeling that her child was in danger, ran to an ominous place, but was late - the girl could not be saved. In desperation, she rushed to the killer, and both of them fell down, not unclenching a mortal hug. The next morning, a huge number of unusual plants appeared near the cliff, one half of the leaf symbolized maternal love, the other - stepmother's jealousy. And the sunny yellow flowers gave rise to associations with the blond hair of the deceased girl.
Another legend explaining the origin of the name of the coltsfoot plant is as follows. One woman had a daughter in whom she did not have a soul, and an unloved stepdaughter. Fate took her own child from her, so the unfortunate mother spent many hours in the cemetery, stroking the earth on the grave. So the plant grew, one half of its leaves was warm, like a mother’s love for her own daughter, the second was cold, like a woman’s indifference to her stepdaughter.
Spread
We continue the description of the coltsfoot plant by indicating the places where it can be found. There are many of them, primarily glades, ravines, riverbanks flooded with sun. The plant is also found in forest edges, summer cottages, fields, meadows, preferring moist clay soils without sod. This natural doctor grows on the territory of Western Europe, Siberia, Asia, and is also found on the African and North American continents.
Features
The medicinal plant of coltsfoot is interesting in that in spring (mid-March - early April), flowers first appear, and then leaves. For this feature in the UK, the flower is called "son before father." The plant has a powerful root that goes into the ground per meter, develops at a very high speed, so it can be a real disaster for fields and gardens, crowding out cultivated plants. Sometimes coltsfoot is called the first messenger of spring, because modest yellow flowers begin to decorate the ground, barely freed from snow.
It grows in families, so the meadow is almost always dotted with yellow baskets: if one flower has already blossomed, then the second only begins to bloom. After that, like a dandelion, the plant disperses the seeds located on the fluffy villi.
Leaves and inflorescences are used as medicinal raw materials; it is recommended to collect the latter in July, without waiting for them to grow large and coarsen. The resulting raw materials should be dried in the fresh air, avoiding direct sunlight, periodically turning over.
Healing properties
The plant began to be used for medicinal purposes in ancient Greece and Rome. Since these ancient times, it is known that the gift of nature helps to cope with the symptoms of bronchitis and alleviate the course of bronchial asthma. Hippocrates and Avicenna used it in their work.
In Latin, a coltsfoot plant is called Tussilago farfara L., which means “healing cough”. The name very accurately characterizes the specifics of the perennial; its flowers really allow you to quickly get rid of throat diseases, including cough, both dry and wet. But that is far from all. The plant has such an extensive list of medicinal properties that it is used not only in traditional medicine, but also in a completely traditional one. There are several main effects:
- Disinfectant action.
- Expectorant effect.
- Due to the content of tannins in the leaves, the plant prevents the growth of pathogenic microorganisms.
- Essential oils have a beneficial effect on the work of the heart.
- The plant is used for pathologies of internal organs: kidneys, bladder, intestines, stomach.
- The leaves of the plant are applied to wounds and burns for their speedy healing.
- A healing flower will also help with increased fatigue, drowsiness, and overwork.
Sometimes coltsfoot as part of complex therapy is used to treat a wide range of diseases of the throat, oral cavity, purulent infections. However, it is important to remember that, using a large amount of the drug, it is impossible to accelerate the elimination of the disease, but it is very easy to harm yourself. Therefore, the dosage should be strictly observed and, if any disputes arise, consult a medical specialist.
Contraindications
The medicinal plant of coltsfoot has several contraindications, which should be considered by everyone who decided to improve their health and well-being with it. Who should not use flowers and leaves?
- Pregnant women and young mothers during lactation.
- Children under 3 years old.
- With liver pathologies (hepatitis, cirrhosis).
- With constant irregularities of the menstrual cycle.
- Cases of individual intolerance.
Also, doctors do not recommend prolonging the course for more than 1.5 months, because after regular use of coltsfoot grass, glycosides accumulate in the body and begin to poison it. The use of the plant together with antipyretic medicines is possible only after agreement with the physician.
Feasible side effects
When taken correctly, the dosage of coltsfoot rarely adversely affects human health. However, the following side effects are possible:
- Violation of the stool.
- Vomiting and nausea.
- Abdominal cramps.
Most often, they occur when using a medicinal plant in unreasonably large doses. In this case, the reception is immediately stopped.
The best recipes
We will get acquainted with the most useful recipes from the piggy bank of folk wisdom, which will help to use the medicinal properties of the coltsfoot plant with maximum benefit. You can quickly get rid of a cough with the help of such a means: pour a glass of boiling water 1 tsp. leaves of the plant, insist for 30 minutes. The resulting drink to drink three times a day for 1 tbsp. l 10 minutes before meals. After 2-3 days, only memories will remain of the cough.
Such an infusion will help normalize the acidity of the stomach: 20 g of dried flowers are taken per 1 liter of boiling water, the time for infusion is 60 minutes. Next, the product is filtered with gauze, taken every 6 hours in 100 ml.
With a choking cough, you can use the smoke from the plant. To do this, crushed dry grass and leaves are poured onto a hot pan, and a person suffering from a cough inhales the smoke that forms. A 2-3 minute procedure will bring relief almost immediately.
Fancy pasta
Coltsfoot is a healthy plant that can also be eaten, surprising household members with an unusual dish whose ingredients they will never guess. So, for cooking you will need:
- Apple.
- Butter - 2 tbsp. l
- Coltsfoot flowers - ½ cup.
- Sugar - 1 tsp.
- Cinnamon - a little bit, on the tip of a knife.
The apple should be baked in the oven, then chopped to a puree state, mixed with oil, flowers, sugar, add cinnamon. It turned out a sweet pasta that can be spread on bread or eat like jam.
Interesting Facts
In conclusion, we offer to get acquainted with a selection of fascinating facts about an amazing plant:
- Coltsfoot is the logo of pharmacies in Paris.
- For medical purposes, the root of the plant was previously used, but now only the ground parts are used.
- The flowering time is almost 40 days, which is a real record for the first spring flowers.
- The mother-and-stepmother plant is a honey plant, and it is very useful, it helps to wake up the hardworking inhabitants of the hive. The honey productivity of the flower is low, but the problem can be solved due to the large number: often bright yellow baskets adorn meadows and fields, providing the bees with the opportunity to collect the required amount of nectar.
- This representative of the flora is also a natural barometer that allows you to predict the weather.
- The plant grows very well on bonfires, uses ash as a fertilizer.
- In ancient times, the flower even had its day - April 10th. It was believed that drugs prepared from raw materials torn off on this day possess magical properties.
We examined the features of the appearance of an amazing inhabitant of meadows and ravines, learned the history of the origin of the coltsfoot plant, its healing properties.