Will there be among gourmets and lovers of exotic dishes who will refuse a simple Ukrainian borsch? I think no. This dish firmly won the hearts of Slavic peoples for its taste and unusual brightness of colors. However, few people thought about why borsch is so called. This dish has been known since the 18th century, and its main ingredient, in addition to vegetables, was the borsch plant, whose young shoots were harvested in the spring in the forests.
Borsch, hogweed, bear paw, bodran, marigold, take off, leaflet, goatskin, sore grass, virloma - all this is pican grass. She still has many other names - in each area its own was used.
Description
The pican plant (hogweed) belongs to the Umbrella family. This is truly gigantic grass, sometimes reaching a height of more than three meters. No wonder the plant is named after the hero of ancient Hellas Hercules - Herácléum. From the side, it resembles a mixture of burdock with chopped leaves and huge dill umbrellas. The stem of the hogweed is powerful, branched. Huge picans leaves cut into 5 large fractions (the grass is not in vain called “a bear's paw” - by analogy with their appearance) reach sizes up to 25 cm in diameter. From above they are bare and smooth, from below - slightly pubescent, rough. The root is thick, straight. Pikan grass blooms from mid-summer to autumn. White small five-petal flowers are collected in complex umbrellas.
Application
In early summer, when the green of the plant is still young, dairy, it is used in the preparation of salads, cooking soups. The stalk of a young hogweed after cleaning from a rough hairy peel can be consumed raw. The kids love him very much - after all, this is the first green after a long winter. The taste of crispy stems is extraordinary - juicy, slightly sour. Due to its high palatability, pican grass is often grown in home gardens. Soups from young nettles and hogweed leaves not only saturate the body tired of colds with vitamins, they help get rid of the depression that has accumulated over short winter days. The chemical composition of the plant is very rich. It contains sucrose, coumarins, anthocyanins, essential oils, polyacetylene compounds and umbelliferosis.
In agriculture, pican grass is used to make silage. It is not suitable for hay, as its leaves are large, they dry poorly and often rot, spoiling other grass. But in the silo it’s the place for it, the cow parsnip is an excellent livestock feed.
The medicine
Pikan (hogweed) is widely used in folk medicine to treat diarrhea, and also as a choleretic, painkiller. Despite the fact that the leaves of an adult plant cause burns and huge boils and can not be touched with bare hands, infusions from this herb are an excellent tool for treating dermatitis. In addition, decoctions of hogweed are used for neurosis and epilepsy. For the manufacture of medicines, both leaves and roots of the grass are suitable. When collecting this plant, safety precautions should be observed (as mentioned above). The leaves of the plant are dried in a thin layer in a well-ventilated area. They are constantly turned over, otherwise they can rot.