Preparing hawthorn
.Medicinal raw materials are flowers, fruits, leaves of hawthorn. If you have the opportunity, the raw material of hawthorn can be collected yourself.
Hawthorn flowers are collected at the beginning of flowering of the plant, when part of them has not yet opened. At this time, they have the largest stock of active substances, less crumbling and better retain color in subsequent drying. Hawthorn blooms very quickly, sometimes in 3-4 days. When picking, the inflorescences are torn from the large pedicels. Hawthorn flowers can also be cut with garden shears, pruners, and knives. It should be borne in mind that flowers are the most delicate parts of the plant, so they are put in baskets in a thin layer, trying not to crumple. Care should be taken if the flowers are affected by rust or dew, eaten away by insects, and heavily dusted or soiled. Do not collect flowers with eggs or larvae laid on them. Hawthorn raw material should be avoided with similar-looking sloe flowers.
Do not pick hawthorn flowers early in the morning (before the dew has dried) and after rain, as the flowers will darken when dried. Flowers are dried no later than 1-2 h after picking.
Remember that you should not collect hawthorn for the preparation of medicinal raw materials near roads with heavy traffic, where the plants are usually very dusty and polluted, and therefore poisoned by toxic substances.
When collecting hawthorn, do not break, cut or saw off large branches of the shrub. Do not snip all flowers and inflorescences from the bush, some of them should be left for insemination. If you are harvesting hawthorn from year to year, you should remember that you cannot harvest from the same thickets every year.
Hawthorn flowers are dried in attics, under sheds or in rooms with good ventilation, spreading a thin layer on paper or cloth.
Dried flowers, if possible, should be quickly packed in plywood boxes of 10-25 kg, lined with clean heavy paper, and stored in a closed, dry, well-ventilated room. You can also store dried flowers in glass containers. Hawthorn raw material is stored for 1 year.
Dried mature fruits of hawthorn (blood-red, Altai, Daurian, prickly and unipetalous) should be spherical or ellipsoidal shape, hard, wrinkled, 6-14 mm long. In the pulp of hawthorn fruit is 1-3 (in hawthorn prickly) or 3-4, sometimes even 5 (in blood-red) seeds.
The dried fruits of the prickly hawthorn have a brownish-red to dark brown, sometimes almost black color. Blood-red hawthorn has fruits that are usually orange-red, less commonly orange-brown or brown.
Treating with hawthorn
.Hawthorn is one of the most common medicinal plants. Of all the existing species (and there are about 47 of them on the territory of Russia) hawthorn blood-red is the most common species, the flowers and fruits of which are widely used for medicinal purposes.
The flowers (white or pink in color) are mainly harvested, but the fruit is also widely used medicinally.
Hawthorn preparations reduce the excitability of the heart muscle, increase blood circulation in the vessels of the heart and brain, normalize the rhythm of cardiac activity, slightly reduce blood pressure.
All this contributes to the improvement of the general condition of the patient.
Hawthorn preparations are recommended to take in functional disorders of cardiac activity, weakness after severe diseases, the initial form of hypertension, insomnia in cardiac patients.
Hawthorn is also effective in increased thyroid function, atherosclerosis, neuroses and menopause.
When taking hawthorn, regular consultations with your doctor are recommended..
