Elecampane Seeds – Inula Helenium – 10 Grams/0.35 Oz Pack

Elecampane, Inula helenium, also called horse-heal or elfdock, is a widespread plant species in the sunflower family Asteraceae. It is native to Europe and Asia from Spain to Xinjiang Province in western China, and naturalized in parts of North America. Perennial herbaceous plant. Rhizome thick, short, fleshy, with several small, thick roots extending from it. Rhizomes and roots outside brown, inside yellowish. Stem erect, furrowed, pubescent with short dense white hairs, 100-200 cm high. Leaves alternate, large, unequal, with velvety-grayish below; basal leaves petiolate, elliptical or elongate-ovoid. Inflorescences - baskets, 6-7 cm in diameter, located singly at the ends of stalks and branches, which together form an irregular scutellum or brush. The leaves of the wrapper are arranged cristately; internal - pleated, linear, smooth, medium at the end extended; outer - ovoid, grayish-felt, resembling small leaves. The flowers are yellow, with dirty white tufts of hairs instead of calyx; marginal - pistillate, reed, with a linear bend of the corolla, middle - bisexual, tubular, with five denticles. Stamens five, with anthers fused into a tube surrounding the column. Pestle with lower monocabular ovary, long thin column and two straight stigmas. Fruit - oblong, tetrahedral brown or brown seed with a crest, twice as long as its length. Blossoms in July-September. Fruits ripen in August-October. It grows in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Turkey, the Middle East, Central Asia, Mongolia, China, Russia. It grows in deciduous and pine forests and shrub thickets, in forest-steppe and mountain forests (at an altitude of up to 2000 m), in meadows, glades, along the banks of rivers, lakes, mountain streams. Preparations from the rhizomes of elecampane have an expectorant and anti-inflammatory effect, improve appetite, reduce intestinal motility, reduce the secretion of gastric juice. It is believed that the main biologically active substance of elecampane is allantolactone and related terpenoids. Traditional medicine, in addition, notes a diuretic and antihelminthic effect. For medicinal purposes, the roots and rhizomes of the second year of life are used. Collect raw materials in August - September after ripening fruits, until frost, or in early spring, after the appearance of the first leaves. The dug roots are shaken off the ground, washed in water, the stems and small roots are cut off, and then cut into pieces 10-15 cm long and 1-2 cm thick. The prepared raw material is dried at a temperature of no higher than 40 ° C. Dried roots outside the gray-brownish color, on a section of yellowish white color. Roots and rhizomes have a peculiar aromatic scent, they taste bitter, burning. In the food industry, eleven high are used in the manufacture of confectionery and beverages. In the liquor and vodka industry rhizomes are used for flavoring and coloring of wines. Essential oil, contained in roots and rhizome, is used for aromatization of fish, culinary products and food concentrates, it also has bactericidal, especially fungicidal (antifungal) properties. From the roots and rhizomes, you can get a blue paint. Garden forms of elecampane high are used for planting and decorating wet places in parks, forest parks, along highways and railways. Inula helenium high refers to the ancient medicinal plants that were used by doctors of the era of Hippocrates, Dioscorides, Pliny. The plant was used in the practice of Avicenna. Preparations from fresh roots and rhizomes are used in homeopathy. In folk medicine, tinctures and extracts of the rhizome are consumed internally with malaria, edema, urolithiasis, migraine; broths as an expectorant for whooping cough, bronchial asthma, epilepsy, as a hemostatic, diuretic, anti-inflammatory agent for skin diseases, tachycardia; seeds - with some female diseases. Tincture of a fresh root on wine (port wine and Cahors) was used for hypoacid gastritis. In the Kazakh folk veterinary medicine, the rhinitis was treated with horses' sap. From the rhizomes and roots receive a drug used to treat peptic ulcer of the stomach and duodenum.