Mother and stepmother - unique grass, the healing qualities of which are recognized official medicine. Dry or fresh raw materials of this are sure to be found in the arsenal of any herbalist. It is widely used for a variety of diseases, as well as for cosmetic purposes. When to collect coltsfoot and how to brew, what can be cured with the help of this plant and who should refrain from such therapy - you will find answers to these questions later in the article.
Chemical composition
Medicinal action herb, which in the scientific literature is called Tussilago farfara or common boletus, is explained by its richest chemical composition. Scientists have found bitter glycosides in the foliage of the coltsfoot. properties of these organic matter highly valued in medicine.
Did you know?Coltsfoot grass is considered a very valuable early spring honey plant. Its productivity in this aspect reaches 30 kg of honey per hectare.
Also among the ingredients: - saponins, which determine the main medicinal directions of the herb;
- carotenes, which, when ingested human body are transformed into vitamin A;
- malic, ascorbic and gallic acids responsible for metabolic processes;
- phytosterols - fat-like substances;
- mucus, the value of which is in enveloping and softening qualities;
- vitamin C;
- essential oils;
- alkaloids;
- tannins.
Scientific medicine recommends the use of leaves and flowers, whose pharmacy names are, respectively, Folium Farfarae and Flores Farfaiae. They are most commonly used as an expectorant in the treatment of coughs and respiratory organs. Rosettes of this medicinal culture also help with angina pectoris, pneumonia, tuberculosis, imbalance gastrointestinal tract, bronchial asthma.
Did you know? Latin name coltsfoot flower - Tussilago - literally translates as "cashlegon".
Folk healers advise using coltsfoot to improve appetite in children, with colds. And freshly squeezed grass juice is advised to treat a runny nose, scrofula, various inflammations on the skin, ulcers, diseases of the veins, liver and kidneys.
Beauticians use perennial to rejuvenate skin cells and improve hair. If you regularly wash your hair with a decoction of coltsfoot, dandruff and damaged tips will disappear.
Procurement of medicinal raw materials
Coltsfoot sockets appear early. Long before this, the creeping roots of the plant throw out straight peduncles formed in autumn, densely covered with purple scales. Soon, bright sunny flowers are formed from them, and only then petiolate leaves of a rounded shape resembling a heart develop. 
The size of one leaf plate is equal to the human palm. You can recognize the foliage of this plant by its dark green color, smooth cold surface and heavily pubescent soft inner side.
Did you know? Notes on the practical use of coltsfoot are found in the essays of the founders of medicine. Flower rosettes of grass are included in the registers of medicinal raw materials in fifteen countries of the world.
The collection of medicinal raw materials begins in late February - early April, when the coltsfoot blooms. In search of a plant, you need to go to wastelands, where clay. It can also be found near brick enterprises, on gravel areas, mowing railways and on the edges of highways. Of course, it is better to pluck an environmentally friendly product away from a large production and exhaust-polluted route.
Flower baskets are harvested in the first months of spring, and foliage - in early summer. No need to rush to prepare. Wait until the leaves are fully opened and slightly lose their felt hairiness. It is better to pluck petioles with old leaf blades from plants that live in sun-drenched areas. They have a more saturated chemical composition with medicinal components. 
You can dry medicinal raw materials on the street, but not in direct sunlight. Perfect option- a well-ventilated attic, where it is always partial shade, dry and warm. If this is not possible, you can use an electric dryer, while setting 30-34 ° C. Some lay out the collected raw materials on a piece of cloth or cardboard and dry it at room conditions.
After drying, the medicinal herb rosettes are packed in paper bags and sent for storage in dry and well-ventilated places. The collection does not lose its healing qualities over the course of three years.
The use of coltsfoot in folk medicine
Some use the drug for medicinal needs, while others - for beauty, strengthening the body and prevention. various diseases. The recipe often contains decoctions, teas, tinctures, including alcohol. We will figure out how to properly prepare the medicine and in what cases it is necessary to use one or another of its forms. 
Juice
In this form, coltsfoot is more often used in field conditions, when it is necessary to heal a rotting wound, boils, burns and other inflamed wounds on the skin. In addition, herbalists advise drinking grass juice in case of loss of strength, weakened immunity, as a tonic and general tonic as well as for preventive purposes.
Important! Fresh Juice coltsfoot helps with a runny nose. The liquid is instilled into the nostrils as needed.
To obtain healing juice, first of all, you need to thoroughly rinse the leaves, then lightly scald and chop finely. After the manipulations green mass immersed in gauze and squeezed thoroughly. The resulting liquid is highly concentrated, so for internal treatment it is desirable to dilute it with an equal part of boiled water. Some healers advise to boil the already diluted solution for 3 minutes. The drug is taken after meals three times a day. The course of therapy is 10 days.
Tea from coltsfoot is very effective from colds and cough. The drink is prepared from fresh or dried raw materials, brewing with boiling water. Moreover, for these purposes, they use the entire herbal rosette, along with leaves and flowers. You need to drink the drug warm up to three times a day. 
Decoction
Herbal decoctions, like teas, have immunizing properties. They are recommended for the treatment and prevention of diseases, as well as for the recovery of the body after illness.
Important! When harvesting herbal raw materials, beware of damaged leaves covered with yellow or dark spots, as well as underdeveloped suspicious flower rosettes.
A useful liquid is prepared from 30 g of crushed dry raw materials, which are poured into 200 g of boiling water, brought to a boil and kept on fire for 10 minutes. Then wrap with a towel and let it brew for an hour. The finished drug is taken orally 4 times a day after meals. The drink helps with cystitis, myositis, swelling, dropsy and gastric catarrh, and has a diuretic effect.
The infusion is prepared from the dry leaves of the plant. 30 g of raw materials are poured into a glass of boiling water and kept for a couple of 15 minutes. Then strain through gauze. The resulting liquid is mixed with an equal part of non-hot boiled water. Daily drink 100 g of the drug twice a day after meals. 
Alcohol tincture
For getting alcohol tincture you will need to take equal parts of dry leaves and vodka. All ingredients are combined and infused for a week in a dark kitchen cabinet. Then the drug is filtered and taken orally 40 drops 20 minutes before meals. Do not drink water.
external remedy
In cases of abscesses and inflamed wounds on the body that do not heal well, fresh perennial leaves will save the situation. They are thoroughly washed and applied to the sore spot. It is advisable to do such compresses at night, fixing with a bandage.
If the disease happened to you in winter, when there is no young foliage yet, you can prepare an ointment from dry raw materials. It is finely crushed and a tincture is prepared. Then they filter. The resulting liquid is mixed with 100 g of animal fat, and a little is added to improve the effect. All components are thoroughly mixed. Finished product store in a dark place in a container with a tight lid. 
If you have no desire to prepare homemade ointments, you can replace them with decoctions. In this case, the napkin is moistened with a healing liquid and applied to the wound.
Many modern ladies prefer natural skin care for the face, body and hair. A real well of health for them is coltsfoot. In addition, it is not at all difficult for your beloved to make a decoction, tincture or mask from a medicinal plant.
Important! IN initial stages coltsfoot hypertension is used to normalize blood pressure.
If you regularly apply masks from this plant on your face, the skin will become fresh and clean, fatigue and bags under the eyes will disappear. For cooking universal remedy for all skin types, you will need a handful of leaves in any form, pour 0.5 liters of boiling water and let it brew. After half an hour, strain and add 2 teaspoons of liquid (the candied product needs to be barely flooded in a water bath). Mix everything until a homogeneous consistency. Then saturate a tissue with the mask and apply it on your face. After 25 minutes, you can wash off with warm water.Many beauties simply rub freshly squeezed juice into the skin of exposed areas of the body. As a result, they shine with beauty and health. In addition, the epidermis receives necessary nutrition which allows it to retain elasticity and color. 
Did you know?With a choking cough, some healers advise preparing hand-rolled cigarettes from chopped grass and smoking them. Alternatively, you can pour dry leaves on a hot surface and inhale their smoke.
For aged ladies, cosmetologists recommend applying a mask of 1 handful of raw materials and 1 glass every week for 15 minutes. sour milk or sour cream. After the specified time, the product is carefully removed with a damp cloth and the face is treated. green tea. After the done manipulations are washed.
Wash your hair to get rid of dandruff herbal decoctions. They are prepared according to classical pattern. But in order to strengthen and improve the hair, with the prepared liquid, it is necessary to carry out a two-time treatment of dry hair roots daily. In addition, during this period it is advisable not to use a hair dryer.
Collecting and drying coltsfoot
The coltsfoot grows in forests and forest-steppe zones. It can be found on the banks of various reservoirs, in fields and vegetable gardens, in water meadows, near roads, on dumps of quarries. In some places you can find dense thickets of plants.
For medicinal purposes, both flowers and leaves are used. Inflorescences have the same effect as leaves. Flowers as medicinal raw materials are used mainly abroad. Collect flowers in their full bloom on clear sunny days, and later, in the second half of summer, leaves.
It is necessary to cut off the baskets with your hands, capturing about 5 cm of the petiole, this is done immediately after the dew has come down. Basket flowers are mainly used in fresh. However, they can also be dried. Flowers should be dried in special rooms where it is kept constant temperature about 50 ° C, but the leaves need to be dried in the air, in the shade, not forgetting to stir constantly. If you dry the coltsfoot in the sun, the result is not suitable for treatment. This should not be forgotten.
Leaves can be harvested all summer until they are covered with rusty spots, but it is better to harvest them at the beginning or first half of summer. Leaves begin to be collected about 2–3 weeks after the baskets are seeded. This usually happens in June - July, when they accumulate the largest number biologically active substances. It should be remembered that not all coltsfoot leaves can be collected, so the collection of young scaly brown leaves will be absolutely unnecessary.
Medicinal raw materials should be harvested in fairly clean areas, away from highways, take only relatively young leaves of the coltsfoot, without spots on the surface, not yellowed and not affected by rust. In addition, when collecting leaves, you should not pluck very young leaves that have pubescence on both sides. Collect the leaves of the coltsfoot for harvesting should be away from places where animals graze and dogs walk.
From freshly cut leaves of the coltsfoot, the affected leaves should be selected, freely, without crushing. Place in a basket or paper bag and thus transport to the place of drying. Dry the raw materials should be indoors in the shade with good ventilation.
Leaves are dried in attics or outdoors, unfolding thin layer, white side up. In the process of drying, they should be carefully turned over 1-2 times so that both sides of the sheet dry evenly. In the early days, they need to be carefully turned over. Like any mucous raw material, coltsfoot dries for a long time, easily darkens and molds. Nice results gives drying when heated to 40-50 ° C. Can be dried in artificially heated dryers at 50-60°C.
You can understand that the raw material is dried by the characteristic fragility of leaf petioles. You need to store coltsfoot blanks in places protected from moisture, having previously laid them out in paper bags. The finished raw material is severely damaged by granary pests, so dried flowers and leaves are stored in paper or cloth, but not plastic bags. Also, dried coltsfoot can be placed in glass or tin cans. Shelf life of raw materials is 3 years.
It is necessary to collect flower baskets of the mother and stepmother at the beginning of the flowering of the grass, this occurs around March - April, it is necessary to pluck the baskets as well as the leaves, with your hands, while removing the remnants of the stem that may remain on the basket.
Most harvesting of this grass is done in Ukraine, as well as in Lithuania, Belarus, in the regions of Russia, Voronezh and Volgograd.
Properly collected and dried raw materials are whole leaves of natural color, dark green above, with white felt pubescence below, without rust damage, with the remainder of thin, yellowish petioles above.
In pharmacies, raw materials are stored in wooden closed boxes; in warehouses in bales of 20–50 kg. Shelf life 3 years. The cut-pressed coltsfoot leaf is stored for 1-2 years. Do not forget that coltsfoot drugs can be toxic. Overdose should be avoided.
When harvesting coltsfoot leaves, pickers may mistakenly collect leaves of other plants that are not used in medicine. Here are some of them.
Butterbur false- unlike coltsfoot, its leaves are more large sizes, triangular-heart-shaped, from above with woolly tufts, from top to bottom snow-white felt; venation pinnate. The flowers are white or yellowish, the baskets are collected in panicles or corymbs.
Butterbur white- leaves are round-ovate, bright green above, grayish-woolly-felt below; venation pinnate. The flowers are yellowish-white, the baskets are collected in dense panicles or corymbs.
Butterbur hybrid- leaves are round-heart-shaped, young, ragged-cobwebbed above, then almost glabrous, grayish-cobwebby-woolly below, pinnate venation. The flowers are dirty-reddish in color, baskets are collected in thick brushes.
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Mother and stepmother common - Tussilago farfara L. - perennial herbaceous plant from the Aster family, or Compositae (Asferaceoe, or Composifae) with thick, juicy, long horizontal rhizomes. Rhizomes form powerful system, located in several tiers at different depths up to 1 m and extending to the sides up to 2 m.
The cycle of development of mother-and-stepmother is very peculiar. In early spring, as soon as the first thawed patches appear, erect stems grow, covered with brownish scaly leaves. Each such stem ends with an inflorescence-basket up to 2.5 cm in diameter. The flowers in the basket are of two types: the marginal ones are reed, female, and the middle ones are tubular, bisexual, but functioning as male. Coltsfoot - one of the earliest flowering ornamental plants Russian flora: flowering takes place in March - April. Good early spring honey plant. The fruits of the mother-and-stepmother are oblong, ribbed, slightly bent achenes 3-3.2 mm long, brownish in color, equipped with tufts of white hairs. The fruits of the mother-and-stepmother during May fully ripen and scatter. In late May - early June, there is no trace of flowering shoots.
However, the life of a coltsfoot does not stop after fruiting. Simultaneously with the withering of flowering shoots, normal leaves grow from the rhizomes, carrying out photosynthesis until the end of the growing season and accumulating spare leaves in the rhizomes. nutrients, due to which new flowering shoots will grow in early spring. These leaves have long petioles and large round-heart-shaped plates up to 20 cm in diameter with notched-toothed edges. From above, such leaves are green and bare, from below - almost white due to dense felt pubescence. The bicolor leaves of the coltsfoot and served as the basis for this unusual name plants: the lower surface of the leaf, soft and warm due to felt, is compared with a caring mother, and the upper, cold and hard, with a stepmother.
breeds mother and stepmother seeds and vegetatively - due to segments and fragments of its fragile rhizomes. Each section of the rhizome with 1-2 buds, when broken off, quickly grows and gives rise to a new individual. It is due to the rhizomes that the coltsfoot forms dense thickets, occupying several square meters and completely covering the soil with leaves.
Each coltsfoot plant produces from 5,000 to 17,000 seeds. Dispersed by the wind, they capture new territory. Getting on moist soil, seeds germinate in the first day. If there are no conditions for germination, the achenes rot, they do not remain in the soil at all. At the same time, under artificially created favorable conditions, coltsfoot seeds remain viable for up to 3 years.
The coltsfoot is a Eurasian-North African species listed in North America. In Russia, it is found as the most common plant in many regions of the European part and Siberia. It grows in wastelands in settlements, in gardens, vineyards, orchards, on embankments and in excavations of railways and highways, in quarries, ravines, ditches, and various habitats with disturbed grass cover. Sometimes it litters crops. Often acts as a pioneer in the overgrowth of exposed areas, especially with sandy soil.
Medicinal value of coltsfoot and methods of medicinal use of coltsfoot
In medicine, mainly green leaves of coltsfoot are used. They contain bitter glycosides (up to 2.6%), inulin, saponins, essential oil, sitosterol, carotene, ascorbic and other acids, tannins.
The leaves of the coltsfoot have an expectorant and emollient property, so medicines from them are used for various diseases respiratory tract and lungs, including for the treatment of bronchitis, bronchial asthma, pneumonia, pulmonary tuberculosis. This is an old Russian remedy for cough and suffocation. The leaves of this plant are component many "breast" and diaphoretic fees.
IN traditional medicine use together with leaves and coltsfoot baskets. At the same time, drugs from them are prescribed not only as expectorants and anti-asthma drugs, but also for the treatment inflammatory diseases gastrointestinal tract and urinary tract. A decoction and infusion of the leaves and inflorescences of the coltsfoot is drunk to stimulate the appetite and improve digestion. Fresh leaves are applied to wounds, ulcers, boils, abscesses to speed up their maturation and healing.
Fresh leaf juice dripped into the nose helps with a runny nose (2-3 drops 3 times a day).
For asthma, traditional medicine recommends that unblown inflorescences cut in early spring be dried in the shade and ground into powder.
Daily boil and take 12 g of powder. Efficiency is enhanced if nucleolus powder is added in the same amount to the coltsfoot powder. The mixture is brewed and consumed in three doses during the day.
Washed leaves are applied to painful swellings on the gums, often formed after tooth extraction.
In case of inflammation of the mammary glands, it is useful to apply washed coltsfoot leaves or burdock leaves with a matte side to the breast.
For bronchial asthma in children, pour 40 dried leaves of coltsfoot into 500 ml homemade vodka and leave overnight. The treatment regimen is as follows: on the first evening, the sheet is placed on the back (between the shoulder blades). The next evening - on the chest. So you need to alternate the leaves until they run out.
At acute bronchitis Boil 2-3 sheets of coltsfoot in 500 ml of fresh milk and add fresh milk on the tip of a knife pork fat. Take 50 ml in the evening before bed.
To strengthen hair, wash your hair 3 times a week strong decoction mixtures of nettle leaves and coltsfoot leaves, taken equally. This helps to get rid of dandruff.
At acute gastroenterocolitis take an infusion of 4 teaspoons of crushed leaves per 200 ml of boiling water (daily dose).
In case of kidney disease, take an infusion: 4 teaspoons of crushed coltsfoot inflorescences per 200 ml of boiling water (daily dose).
At chronic cough keep fresh or dried coltsfoot leaves in your mouth all day long.
With shingles, collect the youngest leaves of the coltsfoot, mash them with a wooden mortar so that the juice comes out and apply for 20 minutes. to sore spots, covering with a linen cloth.
Fresh leaves are applied to boils to speed up maturation.
For colds, take 1/3 teaspoon leaf powder 3 times a day. Drink water.
For diseases Bladder dry leaves of coltsfoot, bearberry and lingonberry are mixed in equal quantities. Brewed and drunk like tea.
With shortness of breath, boil 15 g of leaves in 200 ml of water. Take 1 tablespoon every 3 hours.
For pneumonia, pour 200 ml of boiling water into an enameled saucepan, put 1 tablespoon of leaves, cover with a lid and put for 15 minutes. into boiling water water bath, let the infusion cool, strain, squeeze out the remaining raw materials. Bring the volume of infusion boiled water up to 200 ml and dissolve 1 tablespoon of honey in it. Take 200 - 600 ml during the day as an emollient, expectorant, diaphoretic.
For gangrenous wounds, make dressings from the juice of the leaves.
With rhinitis (inflammation of the nasal mucosa), the juice squeezed from the leaves is drawn into the nose.
With cystitis, inflammatory processes stomach, intestines 20 g of leaves or inflorescences insist in 1 liter of boiling water. Take 100 ml 4 times a day.
In case of bronchial asthma, brew 4 teaspoons of crushed leaves with 1 cup of boiling water, insist ZOmin., strain. Drink 1/4 cup 4 times a day.
With bone fractures, tincture of inflorescences of coltsfoot, dandelion, lilac and burdock root helps in the ratio T. 1:1:1. The mixture is filled 3/4 of the vessel and poured with vodka. Used for lotions and compresses. The same vodka tincture helps in the treatment of bedsores. It is effective, especially in combination with mummy, and for "senile" fractures.
In inflammatory diseases of the intestines and stomach, they drink an infusion of 30 g of leaves per 1 liter of boiling water (1 cup 2-3 times a day half an hour before meals).
When mastitis begins, compresses are made from leaves soaked in hot milk. Usually 2-3 treatments are enough.
For headaches, a decoction of the leaves is used: 5 g of dry crushed raw materials in 2 cups of hot water, boil for 5-7 minutes, strain. Take 1/3 - 1/2 cup 2-3 times a day 1 hour before meals.
Infusion of leaves: 3 tablespoons of dry crushed raw materials per 1 cup of boiling water, insist ZOmin., strain. Use in the form of compresses for thrombophlebitis.
Fresh juice: 1 tablespoon 3 times a day.
Infusion of leaves: 20 g of dry crushed raw materials per 1 cup of boiling water, leave for 30 minutes, strain. Take 1-2 tablespoons 4-6 times a day for sluggish digestion, intestinal inflammation, cholecystitis.
Infusion of leaves and stems: 2 tablespoons of crushed raw materials per 1 cup of boiling water, insist ZOmin., strain. Gargle with laryngitis.
Fresh plant juice: 1 tablespoon 3 times a day after meals for kidney disease, inflammation of the bladder.
Infusion of leaves: 5 g of dry crushed raw materials per 1 glass of hot water, insist ZOmin., strain. Take 1/3 - 1/2 cup 2-3 times a day 1 hour before meals in the same cases.
Infusion of leaves: 1 tablespoon of dry crushed raw materials per 1 cup of boiling water, insist ZOmin., strain, bring the volume to 1 liter. Use for douching with colpitis.
Infusion of leaves: 20 g of dry crushed raw materials per 1 cup of boiling water, leave for 30 minutes, strain. Take 1-2 tablespoons 5-6 times a day skin rashes, furunculosis, chronic ulcers, eczema. The same infusion is used externally.
Dry leaves are brewed as tea and drunk for chest diseases, dropsy, cough, suffocation.
The leaves of the coltsfoot "smoke" with spasmodic cough; with a cold, inhale smoke through the nose or instill the juice of the leaves in 2-3 drops.
Cigarettes for smoking: 1/3 teaspoon crushed coltsfoot leaves rolled into ayurme cigarettes. With a toothache, smoke is drawn into the mouth.
Fresh juice with sugar is recommended for patients with pulmonary tuberculosis.
The fresh leaves are applied to the forehead in cases of headache; they also treat erysipelas of the skin, calluses.
With erysipelas, it is better to crush the leaves and sprinkle the affected areas in the form of a powder.
In early spring, it is useful to drink the juice of fresh coltsfoot leaves. The leaves are washed, scalded with boiling water, passed through a meat grinder and squeezed. Ready juice is diluted with water (1:1) and boiled for 2 - 3 minutes. Take 1 tablespoon 3 times a day. The course of treatment is 7-10 days.
It should be noted that therapeutic effect coltsfoot, although slow, but positive and without side complications.
Features of harvesting coltsfoot
The leaves of the coltsfoot are harvested in the first half of summer, plucking them by hand along with part of the petiole (no longer than 5 cm). Since the habitats of this plant are often located near congested roads, the leaves can accumulate a lot of salts that are harmful to human health. heavy metals. In no case should raw materials from such places be used for medicinal purposes. Medicinal raw materials should be harvested in fairly clean areas, away from highways, take only relatively young leaves of the coltsfoot, without spots on the surface. The raw materials are dried in attics, in ventilated rooms, under sheds, laying out the leaves in a thin layer on a clean bedding. The leaves of the coltsfoot usually do not give moisture well, drying is slow, so it is necessary to carefully stir up the raw material from time to time.
After drying, the leaves of the coltsfoot are sorted out, removing browned and covered with mold. Flowers with stems are dried at a temperature of 50 - 60°C in a dryer. Store in a dry place in a closed container for up to 3 years.
The coltsfoot contains the forces of the Sun, Mercury, and the Moon. The collection is made in the first phase of the moon, at sunrise, by dew. Collect under the influence zodiac sign Leo.
Everyone who loves walks in the forest observes the colorful and unforgettable flowering of the coltsfoot in early spring. After the snow melts, thawed patches, clearings, secluded open corners of thickets and forest edges are covered with islands of bright yellow spiky, reed flowers that delight the eye and create a joyful spring mood after long cold weather.
Did you know that this flower compound culture, belonging to the Aster family, is natural healer? Medicinal plant mother and stepmother, the medicinal properties and contraindications of which are determined by the biologically active phytonutrients present in it, has a complex effect on the foci of inflammation and the entire body as a whole.
Water infusions of herbs make bronchial mucus more liquid, facilitating the processes of sputum discharge, strengthen female body, help in the treatment of diseases of the urogenital area, lotions with infusion improve the condition of patients with dermatological diseases and damage skin, and mouth rinses soften the manifestation of dental problems.
How is grass harvested, dried and stored?
By the way, the plant belongs to one of the very first and especially valuable spring honey plants, providing bees with nectar and pollen. Harvesting of coltsfoot leaves is done in early spring. The collected raw materials are dried under a canopy, in an attic, in a barn or in electric dryers at a temperature not exceeding 50°C.
Keep coltsfoot like the rest healing herbs, in paper, cardboard or linen packages, as well as in glass jars in a dark place with good ventilation. Healing properties raw materials remain unchanged for 2 years. Mother and stepmother is sold in the pharmacy chain, in the markets, in eco- and phyto-shops.
Medicinal properties mother and stepmother
The composition of fresh and dried leaves of the mother and stepmother contains mucus, tannin, bitter glycosides, tannins, essential oil, phytoncides, sterols, organic acids (malic, gallic and tartaric) polysaccharides, alkaloids, vitamins (carotenoids, C, group B), mineral salts.
Internal intake of hoods, thanks to high concentration mucus, has a pronounced enveloping effect on the walls of the oral cavity, larynx, throat, esophagus, stomach and intestines of the mucous membrane.
Back to main features medicinal plant include: diaphoretic, sanitizing, anti-inflammatory, antiseptic, regenerating, enveloping, bronchodilator, immunomodulatory and antioxidant.
Purify the blood, eliminate mastitis, heal in short time burn surfaces, ease the course peptic ulcer and cholecystitis and get rid of erysipelas- that's far from complete list diseases from which mother-and-stepmother helps.
This flowering perennial has been widely known in folk medicine for a long time. It is used for many diseases, including respiratory system person. Traditionally dried grass is part of chest and emollient collections, helps to get rid of all types of coughs, thinning sputum, especially with whooping cough, pneumonia, laryngitis, asthma, tuberculosis and bronchitis.
Local baths from the infusion and decoction of coltsfoot are prescribed in complex therapy with hemorrhoids and cystitis. Procedures lasting 15 minutes are performed by sitting in a basin with warm liquid 1-2 times a day. With bleeding in the colon, microclysters with a decoction are additionally used.
Cosmetologists, trichologists and dermatologists advise to pay close attention on the unique plant mother and stepmother. Medicinal properties for women are the ability of water extracts to stop hair loss, improve the condition of curls, cleanse the skin of rashes and acne, rejuvenate the face and smooth out wrinkles. And also poultices with dried powder plants cure mastitis.
Recipes for medicinal purposes
For a cold accompanied by a cough, protracted bronchitis, whooping cough, tracheitis, a mother and stepmother herb decoction is used, prepared by steaming a tablespoon of dried raw materials with a glass of hot water and simmering the liquid for ten minutes in a steam bath. After cooling, the decoction is filtered and taken 15 ml three times a day before meals.
by Notes of the Wild MistressIt will take quite a bit of time, the snow will melt, and the first yellow eyes of the flowers of the forest lapushka will appear on the thawed patches. What plant do you think it is? It is also called kamchuzhnaya grass or kolorechnaya grass. Rannik, butterbur. Well? Guessed? If not, then such names as a two-faced, stepmother, mother-grass will definitely help you decide. This, of course, mother-and-stepmother.
A unique plant, there are so many names. Yes, what a variety!
The names mother-grass, stepmother and two-faced are associated with an interesting pubescence of leaves. Radical leaves, located on long petioles, are rounded heart-shaped from above - smooth, cold, like an unkind stepmother, and from below - soft, velvety, warm - like an affectionate mother.
The mother and stepmother plant has a branched creeping rhizome and thin roots. Golden-yellow flowers appear directly from the rhizome in the earliest spring, long before the leaves appear.
Properties of the plant coltsfoot
However, not flowers, namely leaves are very valuable for medicinal purposes. It is the leaves that contain a huge amount of useful substances. Macronutrients: magnesium, calcium, potassium; trace elements: selenium, silicon, copper, and many others.
And the medicinal properties of the leaves are due to the presence in them of substances such as the glycoside tussilagin; saponins; sitosterol; malic, tartaric, ascorbic and gallic acids; polysaccharides: inulin, dextrin; flavonoids (rutin, hyperoside). Carotenoids, essential oils and other substances also determine beneficial features mother and stepmother.
The healing properties of coltsfoot have been known for a very long time, even in Ancient Rome. Pliny and Dioscorides used the coltsfoot plant in the treatment of coughs and various lung diseases in the form of aromatherapy - patients inhaled the smoke from dry leaves through a tube, and a decoction of the leaves was also used. Hippocrates used preparations of the coltsfoot plant both as an expectorant and as an external remedy, for example, in the form of poultices for abscesses.
Application of coltsfoot
Nowadays, the infusion and decoction of the leaves are prescribed by doctors, mainly as an emollient and expectorant in the treatment of diseases of the upper respiratory tract (laryngitis, bronchitis).
The mother and stepmother plant is also used in the treatment of inflammatory diseases of the gastrointestinal tract and kidneys.
Mother and stepmother leaf is an ingredient in diaphoretic teas and chest fees as a remedy for fever.
Another use of mother and stepmother is in the treatment skin ailments: erysipelas, scrofula and hair loss.
When and how to harvest coltsfoot grass
The collection of leaves of the mother and stepmother is carried out in the summer sometimes, in June-July, during their maximum development. Collect unfolded (not young) leaves with part of the petiole. Dry raw materials at 50-60 ° in electric dryers or in an ajar oven. The leaves are laid out in layers of 1-2 sheets and a couple of times a day the leaves are carefully turned over.
Dried raw materials are stored for up to 3 years.
