Buttercups are one of the most amazing flowers that nature has created. They connect the incompatible: strength and weakness, benefit and harm, life and death, medicine and poison. Bright yellow flowers have long attracted people to themselves.
Buttercup (Ranunculus) mentioned Dioscorides (I century AD) in his treatises. The ancient myths of the Scandinavians and Slavs associated the flowers of buttercups with the gods Odin and Perun. In the Middle Ages, buttercup herb decoction was considered a cure for leprosy.
From buttercups poisons were prepared (young Juliet took a sleeping potion made from buttercup). A garden buttercup, in the 16th century that came from Turkey to England, for a long time contested the right of a rose to be considered a symbol of the Ottoman Empire. About 600 species of the genus Buttercups today settled throughout the Earth.
Did you know? The names of the buttercup are also amazing. The Latin name of the genus "Ranunculus" comes from "rana" - frog. Buttercup, like a frog, has chosen a swampy, wet meadow and can live in water. The Slavs nicknamed him “the buttercup” for poisonousness, “lute”. The flower has other names - poisonous tooth, night blindness, whelk, fierce color, ram's tooth, etc.
Composition and therapeutic properties of buttercups
The peculiarity of the buttercup species is that all plants are poisonous to one degree or another. They are similar in chemical composition, but in each individual form, certain properties may prevail.
Buttercup leaves and stems contain protoanemonin (C5H4ABOUT2) - volatile compound (alkaloid) bitter in taste.
In high concentrations, this poison is dangerous - it has a neuroparalytic effect (mucous membranes are affected, the cardiovascular system and the respiratory center are inhibited, as a result of which death can occur).
If it gets under the skin or into wounds, it causes tissue necrosis (necrosis). The effect of this alkaloid in small quantities has the opposite effect, healing:
- stimulates the nervous system;
- increases immunity;
- the number of red blood cells increases;
- pathogenic microbes are destroyed.
- dilutes the blood, does not form blood clots;
- prevents the development of cancer cells;
- heals wounds;
- enriches with vitamin PP.
- promote expectoration when coughing;
- lower blood pressure;
- have a choleretic effect;
- reduce heat.
- prevent the destruction of hyaluronic acid (ensures the health of cartilage);
- remove free radicals from the body;
- protect capillary vessels.
Among the therapeutic properties - anti-tuberculosis, antibacterial (E. coli, viral staphylococcus), joint improvement, etc.
Did you know? Buttercup caustic (its second name is night blindness) is the tallest representative of the species. In height, it grows up to 1 m. Despite the name, this plant does not cause blindness in chickens, but if its juice gets on the mucous membranes, it can harm.
Application of a buttercup in traditional medicine
The people have long used the healing properties of buttercups to cure many diseases and disorders.
The most popular in traditional medicine - Buttercup poisonous. The fleshy, shiny and juicy leaves of this plant are rich in juice.
Did you know? Buttercup poisonous has seeds that are able not to get wet, to swim and not to drown in water due to the villi covering them, and cones with air in the peel of the seed.Because of the high content of poison, buttercup is used to cure only external diseases: the juice is diluted with water and applied to the skin (fighting with scabies mites). Weak solution is used dFor washing the barley on the eye, festering wounds.
In the case of an abscess on the skin a cake of finely chopped leaves will help - the pus will stretch out, and the ulcer will open.
Get rid of warts You can, several times dripping on it with juice from the stalk of a buttercup poisonous.
Buttercups are used in the treatment of skin tuberculosis (you need 3 tablespoons of chopped plants pour 0.5 liters of boiling water and insist 3 hours).
From muscle pain Alcohol-infused buttercup flowers (50 flowers per 0.5 liter) help. You need to insist for three weeks in a dark place, then squeeze and filter, make compresses.
Buttercup green broth cure heel spurs - it is necessary to soar legs every day (a glass of greens per liter of boiling water, cook for 3 minutes and insist 30 minutes). Buttercup helps with rheumatism.
Important! Preparing decoctions and infusions for ingestion, you must use only dry raw materials (alkaloids should evaporate and toxicity will disappear).
Traditional medicine uses decoctions and infusions also for the treatment of pneumonia, asthma, women's diseases, pleurisy, enterocolitis, etc.
If you pour half a cup of dried buttercups with 0.5 liters of boiling water and insist in a thermos, you will get a tincture for rinsing with tonsillitis or for washing wounds.
Buttercup tincture like umbilical hernia remedy Prepared like this: 50 g of dried flowers white or marsh buttercup insist on 0.5 l of vodka for 7 days in the dark (you need to shake every day).
Take daily for a tablespoon before meals.
Banewort It has long helped with scurvy (due to the high content of coumarins and gamma-lactones): squeezed 2-3 drops of juice into a glass of water and drank three times a day for a month.
Buttercup creeping can alleviate the course of malaria (in the morning you need to put a gruel of green leaves to the veins (elbows, wrists) - and the evening attack may not take place.
Buttercup Flowers Ointment for the treatment of inflammation of the lymph nodes. To prepare the ointment take some flowers (dried) and part of eucalyptus. Herbs need to grind to powder and mixed with four parts of boiled lard. Inflamed lymph nodes need to be lubricated twice a day.
Important! Independent use of medicinal products from buttercups made according to traditional medicine recipes, without consulting a doctor can have serious consequences - all buttercups contain poison!
Application of buttercups in veterinary medicine
In veterinary medicine, the use of buttercups is traditionally used. Positive therapeutic effects were established experimentally at veterinary stations by practicing veterinarians (used tinctures, solutions, decoction of buttercup, etc.).
Diseases of purulent and purulent-necrotic nature in horses, cows, and sheep have succumbed to the most successful treatment. hoof rot, necrobacillosis, wound infections, ulcers, etc.
Did you know? "Folk" Christianity is rich in legends about buttercups: Christ presented Mary with stars, turned into buttercups, as a sign of his love. Buttercup received poison from Satan, who was hiding among the flowers, fleeing from Archangel Michael.
Buttercups and beekeeping
The blooming of buttercups in May-June is a threat to bees due to the presence of the ranunculin glycoside and the lactone of proonemonone, which are contained in pollen and nectar. Bees are poisoned, they cannot fly, whirl around the ground, there are many dead around the beehive, the whole bee family can disappear.
This is called pollen toxicosis, "may disease", etc. If there are bushes of buttercups next to an apiary, then it is necessary:
- remove the somatorams from the hives and feed the bees with sugar syrup for 2 days;
- Collect affected bees on a flat surface with a thin layer, place in a dark and warm place, sprinkle warm syrup on them (3 parts of water, one sugar);
- mow the buttercup thickets, if possible, change the location of the hives.
How are buttercups used in agriculture
For agriculture, buttercups are of no value. On the contrary, when grazing livestock (cows, sheep, less often horses) in flood meadows, in swampy and damp places, animals can get poisoned by buttercups.
Because of the poisoning, the digestive tract and kidneys are affected, nervous disorders appear (the animal falls, convulsions begin), without timely treatment (removal of poisons from the stomach with alkaline solutions), death can occur.
Toxic toxins can be passed on to calves through milk. To prevent pasture poisoning, pasture should be checked for buttercups.
When haying when the grass is dried in the sun, poisonous alkaloids evaporate, and dry buttercups become suitable for feeding to cattle.
How to store medicinal raw materials from buttercups
Buttercups are harvested for medicinal purposes in June (during the completion of flowering). The ground part of the plant is cut with a pruner (leaving 5-7 cm above the ground). Harvesting is best done with gloves.
Tearing buttercups is not recommended (you can splash juice and damage the root system of the flower). When cutting buttercups, you should try to avoid contact with the juice on the mucous membranes, do not allow contact with the skin for more than 15 minutes (you can get skin lesions).
Cut plants are laid out in one layer and dried in a shady dry place (in attics, sheds or under a canopy). Before drying the plants should not be ground. Dry buttercups are easily ground into powder. Store medicinal raw materials from buttercups in paper containers in a dry place for not more than one year.
Important! It is impossible to dry buttercups in the open sun - the sun's rays will kill all the active substances, and first of all, protoanemonin.
Contraindications and precautions
Contraindications to the use of drugs from buttercups:
- pregnancy and breastfeeding;
- childhood;
- individual intolerance to substances contained in buttercups.
Before the arrival of physicians, it is necessary to induce vomiting as soon as possible, wash the stomach with manganese water and take activated charcoal.
It is easy to poison with a buttercup: if after taking a tincture of flowers of a buttercup, the stomach is sore, nausea appears, the pulse begins to “jump” - to accelerate or slow down, an ambulance should be urgently called (the following symptoms can be convulsions and loss of consciousness).
