Gorchak

2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38

Gorchak (lat. Rhaponticum) - a genus of plants from the Asteraceae family.

Description

Gorchak is a biennial or perennial, endowed with branching stems, and the color of its flowers may vary depending on the species. This plant has pronounced medicinal properties, but at the same time it is considered a weed.

Gorchak is very poisonous for horses, but goats and sheep willingly eat it without any health consequences. Most often, animal poisoning occurs when eating bitter pot, which is in the budding stage.

Where grows

Gorchak can be seen in the vastness of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, as well as in Central Asia and in Western Siberia.

Popular varieties

Creeping gorchak. It is a herbaceous root-sucking perennial, endowed with a powerful root system, which is formed by a vertical main root and smaller horizontal roots branching from it in different directions. On these roots, there is a huge number of small adventitious buds, which are direct evidence of the ability of bitterness to reproduce vegetatively. Each plant is endowed with one or more highly branched, ribbed and erect stems of a grayish color. Rigid leaves can be linear or oblong, and a small tip can be seen at the top of each leaf. Single baskets, located at the tops of the lateral branches and stems of the plant, fold into rather spreading paniculate or racemose-corymbose inflorescences. The flowers of this plant are pink, and the achenes are endowed with small crests. And you can watch the flowering of creeping bittersweet from May to August.

Hawkeye bitter. It is a biennial plant, which is characterized by pronounced harshness. The branchy stalks of the hawkweed mustard reach a height of thirty centimeters to one meter. If such stems are cut, then milky juice will begin to stand out from them. The notched-toothed basal leaves in this variety are usually oblong-lanceolate, and the stem sessile leaves are semi-stemmed, as well as dentate and lanceolate. The dark yellow flowers of the hawkweed mustard form spectacular baskets and are equipped with funny tufts. This plant blooms from June to August.

Beneficial features

Grass (stems and leaves with flowers) and fruits are widely used for medicinal purposes in creeping bitterweed, and mainly leaves in hawk bitter. A decoction of the herb of creeping bitterness is drunk for epilepsy or malaria. Such herb is also used externally - in a crushed form, it will become a real salvation from scabies. A decoction of the fruits of creeping bitterness is an excellent anthelmintic agent.

Hawk gorcha boasts a pronounced analgesic, diuretic, as well as emollient, excellent choleretic and even delicate laxative effect. Freshly prepared aqueous infusion of its leaves is drunk for cholecystitis and jaundice of various etiologies. With constipation, it will be an excellent laxative, and with bruises of various internal organs, it will definitely help relieve pain. And from the crushed leaves of this plant, highly effective poultices are made, which are applied to the skin to resorb and soften dense inflammatory foci like carbuncles, boils, etc.

It is important not to forget that bitterness is still a poisonous plant, which means that when ingested, it is necessary to calculate the dosage very carefully and be very careful.