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Horse sorrel. Legends, myths, symbolism, description, cultivation, methods of application

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Content

1. Photos, basic scientific information, legends, myths, symbolism
2. Basic scientific information, legends, myths, symbolism
3. Botanical description, reference data, useful information, illustrations
4. Recipes for use in traditional medicine and cosmetology
5. Tips for growing, harvesting and storing

Horse sorrel, Rumex confertus. Photos of the plant, basic scientific information, legends, myths, symbolism

Basic scientific information, legends, myths, symbolism

Sort by: Sorrel (Rumex)

Family: Buckwheat (Polygonaceae)

Origin: Horse sorrel comes from Europe and Asia.

Area: Horse sorrel grows in temperate zones of Europe and Asia, including northern and central Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, China, Korea and Japan.

Chemical composition: Horse sorrel contains vitamin C, organic acids (including oxalic acid), carotenoids, tannins and other biologically active compounds.

Economic value: Horse sorrel is used in the food industry and medicine. Its leaves and stems can be used to make soups, salads, sauces and other dishes. It is also prescribed in medicine as an anti-inflammatory and antimicrobial agent, as well as for the treatment of certain diseases associated with weakened immunity. In addition, horse sorrel is popular in landscape design as an ornamental plant due to its beautiful green leaves and fruits.

Legends, myths, symbolism: In medieval Europe, sorrel was considered a symbol of courage and bravery, and was used as a medicine to treat wounds and cuts received in battle. In cooking, it was also often used as a green seasoning for meat dishes. Symbolically, sorrel can be associated with courage, bravery and strength, as its use in medieval Europe was associated with battles and warfare. It can also symbolize health and well-being, as it has been used to treat various diseases. Overall, horse sorrel can be a symbol of courage, strength and health, as its medicinal properties have been used to treat a variety of illnesses and injuries.

Horse sorrel, Rumex confertus. Description, illustrations of the plant

Horse sorrel, Rumex confertus Willd. Botanical description, habitat and places of growth, chemical composition, use in medicine and industry

Perennial herbaceous plant with a powerful root system, erect, branched stem at the top, 60-150 cm in height, buckwheat family (Polygonaceae).

The lower leaves are large, triangular-ovate, the stem leaves are smaller.

The flowers are small, inconspicuous, collected in a narrow-cylindrical, almost leafless inflorescence.

The fruit is a triangular nut 3-4 cm long, enclosed in an overgrown perianth.

Habitat and places of growth. Horse sorrel is a Eurasian species. It grows throughout Ukraine, except the Carpathians and the Carpathian region, in Eastern and Central Europe, in the European part of Russia, in Transcaucasia, in the south of Western and Eastern Siberia, in the Ussuri region.

Chemical composition. Horse sorrel roots contain up to 4% anthraquinone derivatives, which include chrysophanic acid, emodin and chrysophanol; 8-15% tannins of the pyrocatechol group (more than in rhubarb); flavonoids (including nepodin), organic acids (oxalic, caffeic and others), vitamin K, essential oil, resins, iron (in the form of organic compounds). Anthraquinone derivatives and tannins were found in the fruits. Flavonoids (hyperoside, rutin and others), ascorbic acid and carotene are found in the leaves. Flowers contain ascorbic acid (68,4 mg%). All parts of the plant contain large amounts of calcium oxalate. In terms of its chemical composition, horse sorrel is close to rhubarb. The amount of anthraglycosides in it, although smaller, is still large enough to consider sorrel a valuable medicinal raw material.

Application in medicine. Preparations from the root of the plant, depending on the dose, have an astringent and fixative or laxative effect.

In medicine it is used to treat bleeding stomach ulcers, colitis and enterocolitis, hemorrhoids, cholecystitis and hepatocholecystitis, hypertension, as well as against worms, since horse sorrel preparations also have an anthelmintic effect.

Galenic preparations from the roots of the plant have hemostatic, bactericidal, anti-inflammatory, hypotensive and sedative effects. Liquid extract of horse sorrel roots has a calming effect and reduces blood pressure in hypertension of the first and second stages.

Externally, a decoction of the roots is used in traditional medicine for baths and washes for various skin diseases. The root (powder) is mixed with animal fat, and this ointment is used for scabies. Fresh crushed roots with sour milk or cream in the form of a paste are used for skin diseases, applied to abscesses for their maturation and to wounds for quick healing.

A decoction is prepared from horse sorrel root. The root is washed and crushed; one tablespoon of root is poured into 2 glasses of cold water, brought to a boil, boiled for 10-15 minutes, filtered, left for 2-4 hours, drunk 1 tablespoon every 2 hours before meals as a laxative.

A decoction prepared in the same way (but taking 10 times less sorrel root) is used as an astringent for diarrhea.

Sorrel leaves are used in folk medicine as a vitamin supplement for scurvy, in the initial stages of gingivitis, stomatitis.

Contraindications. Sorrel is contraindicated during pregnancy, kidney disease and a predisposition to kidney stones. Sorrel contains a large amount of oxalic acid, which, when bound with calcium, forms in the body, especially in the kidneys, salts that are poorly soluble in water, mainly calcium oxalate. The latter easily falls out in the kidneys in the form of sediment or sand and thereby contributes to the formation of oxalate kidney stones, so sorrel is a risk factor for those kidney patients who have impaired oxalate metabolism, and for this reason, repeated relapses of kidney stones occur.

Other uses. Valuable fodder plant for pigs, rabbits and poultry. The fruits are readily eaten by chickens, geese and ducks. The meat of ducks fed on sorrel becomes juicy and tasty. When young, it is eaten in small quantities by cattle and sheep. It is eaten somewhat better by horses. Eaten by many wild animals: Altai deer (Cervus elaphus sibiricus), sika deer (Cervus nippon), common beaver (Castor fiber), brown hare (Lepus europaeus), white hare (Lepus europaeus).

In Armenia and Azerbaijan, dishes made from horse sorrel leaves are very popular. Not fresh leaves are used, but dried ones - during drying, fermentation occurs, and they acquire a pleasant taste, and the characteristic bitterness disappears.

In Uzbekistan, young leaves and petioles are eaten. In the past, during lean years, the ground stems and fruits were added to flour when baking bread.

An extract from the roots and rhizomes produces a yellow dye; when etched with iron sulfate, it turns black. Leaves and stems produce green dye.

The rhizome can be used to tan leather. In veterinary medicine, the roots are used for intestinal and skin diseases. Promising for introduction into culture.

The roots are used in the tanning industry and as a dye.

Authors: Turova A.D., Sapozhnikova E.N.

Horse sorrel. The value of the plant, procurement of raw materials, use in folk medicine and cooking

This grass is always in sight. In early spring, when the sun has barely steamed the soil, among the young greenery of meadows and glades it is easy to find red, slightly crumpled leaves gathered in a circle. They will appear as patches on a light network of cereals, growing stronger day by day. And when the living gems of bells, maryanniks, and speedwells become colorful, these stout leaves, already fully green, will grow to their greatest size - each one as big as a blade of braid. It was then that the hero plant became even more noticeable. People have called it horse sorrel for a long time. He is known everywhere in Rus' by such nicknames.

Closer to summer, the horsetail rises even higher thanks to its thick, hollow stem. The sorrel blooms briefly and inconspicuously, and now the stems are thickly covered with seeds. The horse coop in the thickets of forbs looks like a neat broom, looming like a pole. By July, the sorrel seeds will turn red.

This way it will wait out the rest of the summer and the whole autumn, right up to the snow cover. So it turns out that horse sorrel will never get lost in the grass, even in the thickest and tallest. “At the bottom, waiting for the spit, there are a continuous sea of ​​protected meadows with blackening heaps of stems of weeded sorrel,” we read in L. N. Tolstoy’s novel “Anna Karenina.”

All types of sorrel are, to one degree or another, endowed with tannins and oxalic acid. Sorrel leaves are rich in valuable vitamin C and protein. The seeds are also useful, and it is not for nothing that game birds and poultry readily consume them. Sorrel belongs to the buckwheat family. Distributed almost everywhere.

With the exception of sour sorrel - a popular wild and garden vegetable - all other representatives of the genus are not only inedible for people, but are often not even suitable for livestock feed. Apparently, the main reason lies in strong tanning agents, which scare animals away from the lush green bushes. Only pigs feast on the mighty grass, they eat alpine, and sour, and tourist-leaved, and curly sorrel - the stomach of sorrel is much more indiscriminate in food. Horses almost never nibble horse sorrel, and the herb’s nickname hints at something completely different. The word “horse” is used in common parlance to describe inedibility and growth.

From a botanical point of view, horse sorrel is a perennial, with a short multi-headed rhizome and a powerful, weakly branched root lying close to the surface. Horseweed grows in a variety of heights, from 30 to 150 centimeters. The stem is erect and furrowed, ending in a long panicle of greenish flowers. Blooms in early summer. The basal leaves of horse sorrel are round and wide, the stem leaves are narrow and small. In Central Asia, its leaves are more triangular. By the way, the generic name of sorrel Rumex, meaning “spear,” was given by the ancient naturalist Pliny precisely because of the shape of their leaves.

The favorite habitat of horse sorrel is floodplain meadows. You will find it, of course, along the banks of rivers, and on the slopes of hills, and in groves, and in clearings, and near roads, but still in floodplain meadows it is extremely abundant. And the point is not only in moderately moist soils, to which the horseman is a known hunter. The main thing lies in the characteristics of its seeds.

Judge for yourself: the seeds of horse sorrel do not fall from the stems not only in the fall, but stay on them throughout the fall and even winter. And only towards high water they are finally completely pulled back by the wind onto the wet snow. Some of them are flooded with water right there, at the place of growth, the remains are carried by the hollow waters to the floodplains and are deposited there along with the silt. Seeds covered with silt do not linger in damp soil. All you have to do is pour in a flood, and they’re right there: sticking on sprouts, getting under way, breaking through the crust of alluvial silt, famous for its fertility. Each seed that successfully takes root and stems produces offspring of many individuals. It happens that a huge colony of the same nomads grows around him, but they all owe their origin not to the seeds of that mother bush, but to the roots that spread out like cords around. In this case, vegetative propagation of sorrel can be considered the main one.

On the shoots of the horse's rhizome there are apical buds, which first send out rosettes of crumpled leaves, and then, after 23 years, a fruiting stem. Later, the bud dies, and the stem to which it gave life acquires seeds, holds them until the opportunity arises, and scatters them onto the moist ground. With the death of the stem, its rhizome awakens new buds to produce new generations of green migrants. Under natural conditions, horse sorrel develops slowly and bears fruit only in the tenth year of life. The rhizome, regenerating itself, lives to a great age, pushing out strong faceted stems for decades.

In folk medicine, infusions of horse sorrel were used to get rid of scurvy and ulcerative stomatitis. In addition to infusions, decoctions and extracts were prescribed. Main use against colitis and hemorrhoids. Anemic people were prescribed horseweed powder. Horse sorrel is held in high esteem and in the medicine of two nations. Thus, in Tibet, juice squeezed from the raw root is used to treat some skin diseases. And in Germany, horseweed decoction was once used to relieve irritations of the pharynx, larynx and upper respiratory tract. Fresh root juice was used for rubbing or to prepare an extract.

The nutritional benefits of horse sorrel are quite small. Young leaves of this herb can be put into salads.

And yet, despite some benefits, horse sorrel should be considered as a typical meadow weed. Although its specific gravity decreases significantly by the time of haymaking, horseweed even in small impurities spoils the feed. After all, the fleshy stems of grass are not dried in windrows, and when the hay is raked into shocks and then baled, this hay goes into the storage half-raw. And hence the pockets of mold, and mustiness, and self-heating of the food. The complaint of the machine operators is also fair: on horse sorrel, the mower knives become noticeably dull during haymaking.

Horse sorrel is pestered patiently and persistently. It is very effective to carefully cut down or mow down its stems before the flowers are released. It is reasonable to turn a heavily weeded meadow into pasture: the horseman is afraid of trampling. Finally, the horseweed pest, the sorrel leaf beetle, can be made available to meadow farmers. This insect perfectly deals with the fleshy leaves of the weed, leaving only latticework of veins.

Author: Strizhev A.N.

Horse sorrel, Rumex confertus. Recipes for use in folk medicine and cosmetology

Ethnoscience:

• As an antipyretic: Boil 1 tablespoon of dry horse sorrel herb in 500 ml of water for 10-15 minutes, then strain. Take 1/4 cup three times a day.
• For digestive disorders: Take a decoction of 1 tablespoon of dry horse sorrel herb in 500 ml of water throughout the day.
• As a diuretic: Boil 2 tablespoons of dry horse sorrel herb in 1 liter of water for 15-20 minutes, then strain. Take 1/4 cup three times a day.

Cosmetology:

• Face mask for inflammation and acne: mix 1 tablespoon of dry horse sorrel herb with 1 egg white and 1 tablespoon of honey. Apply to face for 15-20 minutes, then rinse with warm water.
• Hair mask for strength and shine: Boil 1 tablespoon of dry horse sorrel herb in 500 ml of water for 10-15 minutes, then strain. Use as a hair conditioner after shampooing.

Attention! Before use, consult with a specialist!

Horse sorrel, Rumex confertus. Tips for growing, preparing and storing

Horse sorrel (Rumex confertus) is a perennial plant with sour green leaves that can be used in cooking and medicine.

Tips for growing, harvesting and storing horse sorrel:

Cultivation:

• Horse sorrel is best grown in a sunny location.
• The plant needs well-drained soil, which should be moderately moist.
• Horse sorrel can be grown from seeds or cuttings in spring or autumn.
• It is recommended to remove flowers to conserve energy for leaf growth.

Workpiece:

• Horse sorrel leaves can be collected throughout the summer, but the best harvest comes from spring leaves.
• Leaves should be collected from the bottom of the plant, choosing young and tender leaves.
• Horse sorrel can be eaten fresh or used to make soups, sauces, salads, etc.

Storage:

• Fresh horse sorrel should be stored in the refrigerator in a bag or plastic container for several days.
• Sorrel can be frozen, dried, or preserved as jam or syrup.

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