Gardeners and summer residents love this plant, growing it as a hedge and collecting its fruits. Representatives of traditional medicine and traditional healers especially appreciate it for its medicinal properties, which were successfully used in ancient Greece.
The hero of our article will be the blood-red hawthorn - a large shrub reaching a height of more than four meters.
Distribution
This variety of hawthorn is widespread in our country. The plant grows in the European part of Russia, in Siberia, Transbaikalia. In Asian countries, hawthorn populated Kazakhstan, China, Central Asia, Mongolia. In the central regions of our country, the blood-red hawthorn is grown as an ornamental plant.
Wild species are found in the Moscow, Vladimir and Yaroslavl regions. Prefers to settle in the steppe zones, forests (mainly on the edges), in floodplains. It is an unpretentious, frost-resistant plant. It develops most actively on pebble, sandy, alluvial soils. Feels great on poorly cultivated soils,but subject to the absence of excessive moisture and nearby groundwater.
Description of blood red hawthorn
Due to the impressive size of this shrub, it is often mistaken for a small tree. The hawthorn belongs to the rose family, the genus Hawthorn. With a height that in some cases exceeds four meters, the diameter of the trunk is rarely more than 10 centimeters. It is covered with dark brown bark.
On the branches, the bark is bloody or dark red, with a characteristic sheen. Initially, the shoots are slightly pubescent, as they grow, they become completely naked. On the branches are straight, hard, dark red spines, reaching 5 centimeters in length, but more often their dimensions do not exceed 3.5 centimeters with a thickness of no more than 2 millimeters.
Round whitish lenticels are clearly visible on the branches and young shoots. Hawthorn buds are ovoid, short, blunt, about five millimeters long, and the lateral ones are pointed, glabrous, oblong. Kidney scales are colored dark red, they are glossy, with a characteristic light brown border.
The leaves of the plant are dark green above and light below. They are diamond-shaped or egg-shaped, alternate, with blade tops. Small blood-red hawthorn flowers gather in dense inflorescences located on bare pedicels. The length of the inflorescences is four centimeters, the width is five.
Flowers bisexual, with double perianth, no more than 15 millimeters in diameter. The sepals are triangular in shape, entire, but there are also two-toothed ones. Corollas are white or slightly yellowish in color. The flowers emit a rather unpleasant odor. Abundant flowering of the plant lasts no more than a week and a half.
The fruits of blood-red hawthorn are spherical, rarely oval. Their diameter ranges from 0.8 to 1 cm. They are painted in rich red. Very rarely there are yellow-orange berries that become transparent when fully ripe. Fruiting occurs in mid-autumn: from the last days of September to the first half of October. It is interesting that, being a real long-liver (the life expectancy of a bush is up to 400 years), the blood-red hawthorn, the photo of which we posted in this article, bears fruit for the first time at the age of at least 10 years.
Chemical composition
The healing properties of the plant are explained by the presence of many useful substances contained in different parts of the hawthorn. Leaves contain:
- acantholic, crategolic, chlorogenic, neotegolic, ursolic and caffeic acids;
- quercetin;
- hyperoside;
- vitexin;
- vitexin rhamnoside;
- essential oil.
The flowers of the plant contain:
- tannins;
- flavonoids;
- essential oil;
- acetylcholine;
- chlorogenic and caffeic acids;
- quercetin;
- hyperoside.
Found in seeds:
- fatty oil;
- amygdalin;
- hyperoside.
In the crust:
esculin glycoside
In fruits:
- triterpenoids:
- polysaccharides;
- acetylcholine;
- choline;
- tannins;
- carotenoids;
- palmitic, stearic acid.
In the fruits of hawthorn revealed:
- fatty oil;
- sugar;
- oleanolic, ursolic, caffeic, chlorogenic acids;
- phytosterols;
- tannins;
- glycosides;
- saponins;
- hyperoside.
Healing properties
Drugs made on the basis of blood-red hawthorn increase the supply of oxygen to the brain and heart, dilate the vessels of the brain, soothe, normalize metabolism, and stabilize the heart rhythm. They also improve the general condition of the patient, improve sleep, speed up recovery after serious illnesses, and lower cholesterol levels.
Medicinal uses of blood red hawthorn
Hawthorn preparations are indicated for the following diseases:
- heart failure in various forms;
- tachycardia;
- myocardial infarction;
- first stages of hypertension;
- insomnia;
- arrhythmia;
- nervous disorders.
One spoon (tea) of juice squeezed from fresh hawthorn berries will help get rid of pain in the heart. Due to its healing properties, hawthorn is blood red in the initial stages of hypertensionable to improve the patient's condition. After a twenty-day course of treatment, the walls of blood vessels relax, blood pressure decreases. You need to know that advanced disease should be treated with stronger drugs.
Healing properties of blood-red hawthorn reduce the number of attacks in coronary heart disease, normalize fat metabolism. Stress or nervous tension helps relieve the use of hawthorn with valerian-based preparations. Quite often, doctors recommend using hawthorn tincture for heart attack, atherosclerosis and heart failure. It is possible to achieve a therapeutic effect only by strictly observing the dosage.
Ready-made tincture, purchased at the pharmacy, is taken three times a day, before meals (half an hour). It is necessary to mix 30 drops of tincture with 30 ml of water.
Hawthorn in folk medicine: recipes
Tinctures
Crushed hawthorn fruits insist for fifteen days on 70% alcohol in a ratio of 1:10 in a dark place, shaking the composition every day. A clear yellow-red liquid with a sweetish taste is taken for heart and nervous diseases.
Flower tincture
Effectively helps with rheumatism. To obtain it, you need to pour two parts of the flowers with ten parts of alcohol and put it in a dark place for a week. After that, the affected joints are rubbed with this tincture in the morning and evening. With severe pain, you can do compresses with this tincture.
It should be said that hawthorn fruit extract is the main component of the complex preparation "Cardiovalen", which is recommended for the treatment of vascular and heart diseases, and is also one of the components in many collections for the treatment of renal pathologies.
Infusions
Brew 50 g of flowers in 600 ml of boiling water and insist for half an hour. After that, strain the composition and take 100 ml 3 times a day for heart palpitations, hypertension, dizziness.
In a thermos, brew 25 g of fruits with 200 ml of boiling water. After four hours, strain the composition. It must be taken 50 ml three times a day before meals for general weakness, insomnia, and the initial stages of hypertension.
Crush and mix well hawthorn flowers and cudweed grass in equal proportions. 25 g of this herbal mixture, pour 200 ml of boiling water and leave for two hours. After that, it can be filtered and taken 50 ml three times for inflammation of the bladder, kidneys, hypertension, pain in the heart.
Tea
Flowers and fruits of hawthorn, leaves and fruits of blackcurrant, fruits and leaves of strawberries, rose hips in equal proportions, carefully chop and mix. Brew as usual tea - one spoon (teaspoon) per cup of boiling water. Drink a medicinal drink three times a day in a glass for atherosclerosis, dizziness, insomnia, hyperthyroidism, heart neuroses.
Contraindications
Everyone knows that medicinal herbs have contraindications for use, which cannot be ignored beforestart of treatment. Hawthorn is no exception in this sense.
Preparations based on it or those containing this plant are not recommended for children under three years of age, as well as for pregnant women and during lactation.
Excessive consumption of hawthorn berries (more than 200 pieces) can dramatically lower blood pressure. This condition is manifested by dizziness, drowsiness, weakness, nausea and vomiting.
Hawthorn preparations should be taken before meals (30 minutes). Otherwise, you can feel a sharp pain in the stomach. Before starting treatment with hawthorn preparations in combination with other drugs that have a similar area of \u200b\u200baction, a specialist should be consulted.
Where else is hawthorn used?
Hawthorn has decorative properties, and therefore it is used for landscaping squares and parks, when creating hedges. Found widespread hawthorn and protective afforestation. In addition, this plant has a great soil protection value in mountainous conditions. Sometimes gardeners use hawthorn in fruit growing as a rootstock for dwarf pears and apple trees.
Hawthorn is a wonderful honey plant. From the bark of the plant, you can make a decoction that will become a natural dye for fabric. It will give it a rich red color.
Hawthorn wood is a great value. It is viscous, quite durable, has a beautiful texture. Various carpentry crafts, souvenirs, beautiful art utensils, toys are made from it. Moreover, it has found application inmanufacture of handles for percussion instruments and shovels.
Hawthorn fruits are consumed fresh, frozen, dried, processed. Natural or mixed with other juices are prepared from them. They go well with sour varieties of apples, red or black currants, cranberries. Hawthorn fruits are used in cooking: they are used to make jam, juices, marmalade, jelly and compotes.
