Cornflower blue - ceintaurea cyanus l.

Family Asteraceae - Compositae

Василек синий Василек синий

Botanical characteristics. Annual herbaceous plant. It occurs as a weed in crops, along the edges of fields, near roads. Currently, stocks are decreasing. They grow up in orchards, orchards.

Root stem. Stalk straight, branched. Leaves alternate, lower lyre-divided, petiolate, medium and upper whole, sessile, linear pubescent. The marginal flowers in the baskets are funnel-shaped, blue or blue, the inner flowers are tubular red or blue-violet. Fruit - lead-gray or brownish seed with flying. Blossoms in May - September, fructifies in July - October.

Spread. It occurs as a weed plant in the fields, in orchards and gardens in the entire European territory of the country (except the Far North), in the Urals, in the Crimea and in the Caucasus.

Used parts of the plant. Medicinal raw materials are flowers, aboveground part, leaves, seeds, collected in the usual way.

Chemical composition. Flowers and aerial parts contain anthocyanin glycosides (cyanine, cetaurin), coumarins, chicory, triterpenes, sesquiterpenes, steroids, vitamins, flavonoids (apion, apigenin, quercetin, genkvanin, vitexin derivatives), polyacetylene compounds (polyols and polyenes).

Application. In folk medicine, flowers are used as a diuretic, anti-inflammatory, antipyretic, as a mild laxative and choleretic agent. They are used in diseases of the kidneys and urinary tracts, accompanied by a delay in the release of urine from the body, in the treatment of night blindness - a disease associated with violation of twilight vision, angina, laryngitis, urolithiasis, respiratory diseases, fever, headache.

It has been experimentally established that blue cornflower preparations possess choleretic and diuretic action. In the clinic, they are used as a diuretic for edema of kidney and cardiac origin, with cystitis, nephritis: they are included in the fees used in the treatment of furunculosis.

Preparation

  • To prepare the infusion, take 10 g of flowers, pour 200 ml of boiling water, insist on a water bath for 15 minutes, cool for 45 minutes, filter. Take 1/3 cup 2-3 times a day before meals.
  • For broth 20 g of the aboveground part is poured 200 ml of boiling water, insisted on a boiling water bath for 30 minutes, cooled for 10 minutes, filtered. Take 2 tbsp. Spoon 3-4 times a day.

Contraindications. The flowers of the cornflower are weakly poisonous.