Common Wormwood
.Wormwood (artemys - healthy, fresh) is a perennial herbaceous plant from the family of complex flowers, 100-150 cm high. The rhizome is multi-headed, with short shoots and branching brownish roots. Stems erect, ribbed, branched, woolly-haired above, woody below. Leaves are ordinary, sessile, dissected, dark green on the upper side, white-hairy underneath. Flowers are small, pink, collected in obovate baskets forming paniculate inflorescences. Common wormwood blooms in June-August (Fig. 61).
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Common wormwood is distributed almost all over the former USSR, grows in damp meadows, along the banks of rivers, in vegetable gardens, wastelands, near housing.
It is used for the tops and lower leaves collected at the beginning of flowering. Roots are harvested in the fall when the above-ground part begins to wilt. Dried wormwood herb has a pungent aroma, the taste is slightly bitter, tart. The roots also have an aromatic odor, and the taste is sweetish, pungent.
Chemical composition
.Wormwood herb contains essential oil (up to 0.6%) containing cineol, thujone, borneol; leaves contain essential oil, ascorbic acid (up to 175 mg%, in flowers - up to 7.9 mg%), carotene, tannins, mucilaginous and resinous substances, alkaloids, inulin; roots contain essential oil, tannins, mucilaginous, resinous and saccharine substances.
Action and application
.Mugwort herb has antipyretic, antiseptic and tonic properties.
In Bulgarian medicine wormwood is used as a sedative, appetite-increasing remedy, as well as in gynecological practice.
In Chinese medicine, Indian nigella is used, in which choline, adenine, pyrethrin, ascorbic acid, carotene, and vitamin B are additionally found. Wormwood herb is used as a styptic, antipyretic, antipyretic, tonic and antitoxic agent.
Appointed nigella Indian in toxicosis of pregnancy, neuralgia, pyoderma. Inhalation of smoke from burning dry stems and leaves is recommended for bronchial asthma.
Indian blackbeard is the main raw material for cigar moxa, a method of moxibustion that is very widespread in Chinese medicine and is used for a wide variety of ailments.
Wormwood is an old folk remedy. Abu Ali Ibn-Sina widely recommended the above-ground part of the plant for kidney stone disease, uterine erosions and as an abortifacient in the form of baths; decoction of the herb - for runny nose and headache (in the form of a medicinal bandage).
In domestic folk medicine, the herb and roots of common wormwood were used in the form of an alcoholic extract for cancer of the stomach, rectum and uterus. As a decoction of the root is used in folk medicine as a sedative, anticonvulsant in epilepsy, neurasthenia, meningitis and other nervous diseases; as a decoction of the herb - as an anthelmintic, analgesic and accelerating labor, as well as in amenorrhea and dysmenorrhea; extract from the root - in dropsy. The root, infused with white wine, is used for pulmonary tuberculosis and as an appetite-increasing remedy. Externally, infusion of wormwood herb is used for inflammation of mucous membranes, for the treatment of ulcers and long non-healing wounds. Fresh herb in crushed form applied to wounds for faster healing.
Wormwood is also used as a spicy seasoning for dishes, "especially for fatty dishes, for which in some areas, the plant, especially Indian blackthorn, breed in vegetable gardens.
Field wormwood
.Wormwood (God's tree) is a perennial herbaceous plant from the family of Complexaceae, up to 100 cm high. Stem branched, ascending, reddish. Leaves pinnately dissected below and simple linear above, glabrous or covered with grayish silky down. Flowers are yellow or reddish, in small (2-3 mm across) oval-spherical baskets, collected in brushes, forming a panicle inflorescence. Field wormwood blooms in July through August. Wormwood is widespread in the middle and southern part of the European part of the former USSR, Central Asia, Western Siberia, and the Caucasus.
Field wormwood grows on sandy places, in steppes, pine forests, on wastelands, along roads (Fig. 62).
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Flowering branches and leaves are used.
Chemical composition
.The herb of field wormwood is little studied, in it was found essential oil: in leaves 0,11-0,19%, in flowering tops 0,21%.
Action and application
.In folk medicine, wormwood is used as a wound-healing, decoction of flowering branches drink for uterine bleeding, inflammation of the bladder, infusion - for stomach aches, women's diseases, toothache in the form of gargles. Fresh leaves with pork fat make ointment and apply to boils, splinters, used for sweating feet. Wormwood herb is used to fumigate the air near the sick.
In the semi-desert, the terrestrial part of field wormwood is the predominant pasture plant..
