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Scepter's cowpea is distributed in the European part of the USSR, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. Grows in open places, mainly on sandy soil, on stony places, forest edges, pine forests, near roads and dwellings.
Corollas collected at the beginning of budding are used. The odor of cowpea sceptre has an aromatic, honey-like smell, and the taste is sweet.
Chemical composition and properties of cowpea
The properties of barnyardgrass have a healing effect on the human body. Flower corollas contain mucus (up to 2.5%), saponins, gum, coumarin, sugars (about 11%), traces of essential oil, carotenoids, flavonoids. Ascorbic acid is found in the leaves (13.1 mg%) and in the flowers (36.8 mg%).
Useful properties of cowpea and the trace elements it contains are used to make medicines.
The effects and uses of cowpea
The use of cowpea (flowers) in the form of infusion is used as an expectorant, emollient and enveloping agent for coughs, diseases of the upper respiratory tract.
In France, the properties of cowslip have long been used as an anti-inflammatory, softening, analgesic and mild laxative: flowers - 15 g, leaves - 20 g, boiling water - 1 liter.
The use of cowslip is useful as a laxative, for skin diseases, rashes, boils, eczema.
Fresh leaves of cowpea, boiled in milk, it is recommended to use externally in the form of applications to affected areas, as a pain reliever for burns, panariches and hemorrhoids. Cowpea root, finely cut into circles and dried, is an excellent diuretic, useful in kidney stone disease and gout. It is prepared in the form of a decoction of the root, which should be taken in the morning on an empty stomach, in the afternoon between meals at 125-225 g per day.
In Bulgaria, the use of cowpea in the form of infusion of flowers is used for upper respiratory tract disease, whooping cough, bronchial asthma, shortness of breath.
In Poland, cowpea is used for lung diseases, bronchitis, hoarseness, bronchial asthma, stomach and intestinal pain, neuritis.
Externally, the properties of cowpea are good for washing the scalp for baldness.
In the FRG it was called "royal candle" or "flower torch"; infusion of flowers is used as an analgesic, anti-inflammatory and anticonvulsant, as a styptic and astringent in diseases of the lungs, bronchi, pleurisy, asthma, runny noses with lacrimation. As an external remedy, the use of cowpea is recommended in the form of tincture - in inflammation of the facial nerve and hemorrhoids (Biissler, 1957). In addition, the flowers are used in distilleries to improve flavor (Dorfler and Roselt, 1962). Cowpea flowers are official in 14 countries around the world (Klan, 1948). In Russian folk medicine, corollas and leaves were used as a mild remedy for cough, shortness of breath, bronchial asthma, pulmonary tuberculosis, bronchitis, catarrh of the upper respiratory tract: 15-20 g of flowers brew 200 ml of boiling water, after 30 minutes strain (hairs!), take 3 times a day.
The plant is included in collections and used externally as a throat gargle.
Flowering, oblique tops of cowpea, collected in the early flowering period, we use as an analgesic, anti-inflammatory drug for hypertension, atherosclerosis and inflammation of the respiratory system.
Black cowpea (Verbascum nigrum) is also used in the form of decoction for nervous disorders, epilepsy, diarrhea. The flowers, as a tea, are drunk for edema..
