Common horse chestnut is a tree that reaches a height of thirty meters. It has opposite long leaves. Foliage forms a dense beautiful crown. Horse chestnut ordinary blossoms brightly and attractively. Photos well demonstrate its white with red spots flowers forming pyramidal inflorescences resembling candles on a Christmas tree. Chestnut flowers appear in May. Of them, by autumn a round fruit is formed, covered with thorns. It stores inside a large brown seed. Once in favorable conditions, a tree can reach three hundred years of age.
The Balkan Peninsula is a place where horseback chestnut has long been growing under natural conditions. Its cultivation in the parks of Russia and other European countries began only in the 16th century. Around the same time, it begins to be actively used in medical practice. At first it was the recipe of the famous doctor and botanist Peter Mattioli, who proposed treating shortness of breath in horses with the fruits of this overseas tree. A little later, from Turkey to Vienna, a specialist in the field of botany, Clausius brought ordinary horse chestnut in the form of seedlings and planted an alley with them. When the plants bloomed and demonstrated their beauty, they began to grow in France. It was 1615. The famous chestnuts of Kiev were planted in the center of this city in 1842, when, in general, it was established that their homeland is the Balkan Peninsula. Until that time, almost all European botanists believed that horse chestnut was a plant brought from India.
However, the practical application of its fruits found, oddly enough, the American Indians. When ordinary horse chestnut, brought to this continent by colonialists, took root here, the natives learned to make mashed potatoes from its fruits, roasting them on glued stones. Later, they began to cleanse its seeds of bitter and hard shells, keeping them for several days in a lime solution. After such processing, flour was ground from it. Also, the Indians learned how to prepare malt from the sprouted fruits of a chestnut, and from the peel - to obtain narcotic substances similar in properties to opium.
In Napoleonic times, when France was an isolated state, it stopped importing medicinal raw materials, including quinine. Then military doctors began to extract this substance from the fruits and bark of horse chestnut. They used these drugs to treat dysentery, fever and malaria. At the same time, it was found that with the help of chestnut, it is possible to treat diseases that have arisen as a result of a violation of blood circulation. Powder from its fruits began to sprinkle hemorrhoidal nodes and ulcers on varicose veins. Then, European pharmacists began offering chestnut tinctures for the treatment of gout and inflammation in the intestines. Also, herbalists of France successfully treated them with prostate adenoma. In the twentieth century, chestnut as a therapeutic agent has already been used in the pharmacology of the USSR, Germany and many other countries.