Since ancient times, man has used wild and cultivated herbs in everyday life, the names of which are known to everyone - dandelion, burdock, nettle, celandine, clover, ledum, sage, adonis and several hundred thousand more species. They are grown for food, medicine, livestock feed, for industrial use.
What are herbs
In the world there are such groups of plants:
- Trees - they have one tall trunk, covered with bark, numerous branches depart from the trunk.
- Shrubs - instead of the main trunk, they form several thin lignified trunks.
- Herbs - do not have a trunk, but have soft stems that die annually. They are annual, biennial and perennial.
Wild and cultivated herbs
Plants that grow without human help are called wild plants. They are distributed where suitable climatic conditions exist for them. The herbaceous plants that a person planted or sowed, which he looked after (watered, healed, fertilized) are cultivated herbs. Examples of cultivation have been known since ancient times. During the selection work, scientists have significantly improved the quality of cultivated herbs, increasing their frost and drought resistance, productivity, and resistance to disease.
One and the same plant can be both wild-growing and cultivated. For example, if clover grass grows in natural meadows, it is wild growing. If a person sows clover on pastures and cares for him, he becomes a cultivated plant.
Is cucumber an herb?
Cultivated herbs are very widely used on the farm. Their names are diverse - lettuce, sorrel, timothy meadow, lemon balm, caraway seeds, dill, parsley, mustard, horseradish, motherwort, ginseng and others. These are well-known examples. But did you know that potatoes, cucumbers and tomatoes are, in fact, also cultivated herbs? Their names are familiar to us, but we perceive them as vegetables. In fact, the fruits are used in everyday life as the fruits of these plants, while their life form in botany is called grass. By analogy, banana, pineapple and Jerusalem artichoke are also herbaceous plants, here you can also include wheat, rye, peas, beans and other crops that do not have a tree trunk or lignified stems.
Classification
From a scientific point of view, herbs are divided into:
- Annuals - they completely die off after the growing season and fruiting (for example, dill, peas). They can only be renewed with the help of seeds.
- Biennials - plants whose full life cycle lasts up to 24 months and includes 2 vegetative periods. This, for example, cabbage, carrots, daisy.
- Perennials - plants whose life cycle is more than two years. St. John's wort, burdock, banana - classic examples of perennial herbs.
Other classification options
By industry affiliation:
- cereal, forage grasses (field crop cultivation);
- herbaceous plants whose fruits are vegetables (vegetable growing);
- flowers (floriculture).
For economic purposes:
- Food herbs - dill, parsley, caraway seeds, mustard, eggplant and hundreds of others.
- Feed plants - alfalfa, sainfoin, timothy meadow, etc.
- Spinning herbs - flax, hemp, etc.
- Honey plants - buckwheat, melilot, snakehead, etc.
- Medicinal crops - herbs used in herbal medicine. This is chamomile, motherwort, valerian, ginseng, mint, calamus, St. John's wort, succession, plantain, oregano. They are sown in the fields to collect useful raw materials: leaves, flowers, rhizomes.
- Dyeing plants - calendula, which also applies to medicinal plants.
- Industrial herbs - rapeseed.
A rare type of classification
Cultivated plants (including herbs) are sometimes classified by chemical composition, taking into account the predominance of a substance:
- protein-containing
- starchy
- sugar containing
- oilseeds
- ethereal
- spicy
- alkaloid
- fibrous.
Name Options
Each plant has several names. Popularly, the names of herbs (options can vary greatly among themselves) aptly denote their special properties. In the scientific world, such plants are called Latin words.
| Habitual name | Latin name | Popular name |
| Valerian officinalis | Valeriana officinalis L. | Cat root, forest incense |
| St. John's wort | Hypericum perforatum L. | Ivanovo grass, healthy grass, Mother of God tears |
| Lily of the valley | Convallaria majalis L. | Rejuvenator, hare ears, forest tongue, backache |
| Medicinal dandelion | Taraxacum officinale wigg | Tooth grass, kulbaba, Russian chicory, warthog, Jewish hat |
| pharmaceutical camomile | Matricaria chamomilla L. | Mother liquor, blush |
| Celandine | Chelidonium majus L. | Larkspur, liverwort, light grass |
Cultural herbs of Russia
The names of herbaceous plants that grow in the vast expanses of our country are extremely numerous. Crops are grown on agricultural fields, the fertile land of which allows you to harvest rich crops. The owners sow and plant a lot of herbs on their personal plots.
The most common cultural herbaceous plant in Russia is wheat. Of the other cereals that are widely grown in the country, we can name rye, oats, barley, corn, soy and millet.
Popular legumes - peas, beans, lentils.
Potatoes are the only species of starchy herbaceous plants that are successfully grown in Russia. We also cultivate the only sugar-bearing crop - sugar beets.
Of the oilseeds, sunflower, rapeseed, flax, and mustard are widespread.
Vegetable plants grow in the fields and in any garden - cucumbers, zucchini, squash, eggplant, tomatoes, dill, radish, beets, onions, carrots and cabbage. All of the above are also cultural herbs of Russia. Their names are included in the botanical directory as herbaceous plants. Although this sounds unusual, you must admit!
Medicinal Herbs
The names of medicinal plants that have been cultivated in Russia are extremely numerous. In total, several million hectares are allocated for sowing medicinal herbs in the country. Most often sown mint, chamomile, valerian, plantain, burdock, nettle, celandine. Lavender, St. John's wort, celery, ginger, motherwort, sage, wormwood, marjoram, basil are less commonly grown.
Recently, planted areas under medicinal herbs have been declining rapidly. The main reason is economic inexpediency. Herbaceous plants are demanding in care, the processing of crops is mainly carried out manually, the prices of raw materials are low. In addition, many medicinal herbs in the following years clog the crops of other crops like weeds, growing again and again between rows.
Given the high value of such plants during the Soviet era, they were necessarily included in the crop rotation. However, today a farmer sows wheat and sunflower - those crops that ensure maximum profit. And who wants to sow sage? Perhaps this is a rhetorical question.