2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38
Shamrock (Latin Menyanthes) - winter-hardy perennial, which is a representative of the Shift family. Other names are the watch or the three-leaf watch.
Description
The shamrock is a low-growing perennial, the height of which ranges from fifteen to thirty-five centimeters. The rhizomes of this plant are rather long and thick, and the stems are spongy, branching, articulated and creeping.
The next basal leaves of the trefoil are characterized by rather large sizes. All of them are more or less sessile and naked, have an obovate shape and are equipped with long petioles with bizarre trifoliate plates.
Small pinkish, lilac or white star-shaped trefoil flowers gather in spectacular cluster inflorescences. You can admire the flowering of this plant in spring and June, and the ripening of its fruits usually occurs in July or August. Trefoil fruits have the form of rounded ovate and single-celled bolls, pointed upwards. These boxes have two leaves, and their length is usually seven to eight centimeters.
Where grows
In nature, the trefoil grows mainly along the shores of lakes and rivers, as well as in wetlands. Most often it can be found in the Northern Hemisphere, in areas with a temperate climate. The shamrock is quite widespread, ranging from the Arctic zones to the subtropical zones of America, Asia and Europe.
Usage
The shamrock is used mainly for the decoration of a wide variety of reservoirs. Also, this plant has found its use in folk medicine - on the basis of its leaves, sedatives, diuretics, laxatives and choleretic teas and bitters are prepared. This plant boasts a pronounced antipyretic, analgesic, wound healing, anticonvulsant, antiallergic and choleretic effect. Shamrock is an excellent helper for improving tone, stimulating appetite, as well as for anemia, malaria, tuberculosis and a number of diseases of the gallbladder or liver. It is useful to wash poorly healing wounds with a decoction of its leaves, in addition, baths with the addition of trefoil leaves are sometimes also prescribed for diathesis.
True, the shamrock also has contraindications - it is categorically not recommended for people with increased secretion of gastric juice, as well as for those who suffer from duodenal ulcer or stomach ulcer. You should not resort to the help of this plant and people who are characterized by hypersensitivity to iodine.
And in veterinary medicine, the shamrock is used as an antiseptic for washing ulcers or wounds. They also take it inside - as an anthelmintic.
The field of application of the trefoil is not at all limited to decorative floriculture, folk medicine and veterinary medicine - among other things, the leaves of this plant are actively used in the production of beer or liqueurs, as well as to obtain green paint. And also the shamrock is a great honey plant!
Growing and caring
The shamrock will feel best when planted in shallow waters or on low banks of water bodies. This handsome man is propagated in most cases by segments of rhizomes on which there are buds of renewal, and this is usually done closer to the end of summer.
