Hargal

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

Hargal (lat. Solenostemma Argel) - a drought-resistant succulent shrub from the Kutrovy family, growing in the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa. Since ancient times, the leaves and the bitter sap running along the stems have been used by the inhabitants of the desert for medicinal purposes. Europeans learned about the plant in the early 19th century, when Friedrich Gottlob Hein, a German botanist, described the shrub. Then the Latin name of the plant appeared, which in Arabic continues to sound like Hargal.

Description of the plant

Like many plants of the Kutrovy family, Hargal is a succulent plant that can independently store moisture for future use in its stems and leaves in order to painlessly survive a period of drought.

The height of the shrub varies from 60 to 100 cm, which also helps to survive the unfavorable climatic period.

Erect succulent numerous stems of the shrub have additional protection from sunlight in the form of short hairs on the surface of the stem. Bitter transparent juice (latex) runs inside the stem.

Gray-greenish leaves are arranged in opposite order on the stem, holding on to it with short petioles. The shape of the leaves is lanceolate, with a sharp nose. For medicinal purposes, the leaves are harvested during the flowering period, which lasts four months. Such a long period allows you to harvest dry healing leaves several times per season.

Bisexual flowers are collected in umbrella inflorescences, located on a peduncle emerging from the leaf axils. The inflorescences exude a pleasant aroma.

The flowers are replaced by a pear-shaped fruit, similar to a pointed-nosed pouch. Brown seeds are hidden under the hard shell of a dark purple "pouch" decorated with light purple and greenish stripes. Seeds can lie for a long time in sandy soil, waiting for favorable conditions for the birth of seedlings (temperature not lower and not higher than 35 degrees, plus humidity).

While in Egypt Hargal leaves are harvested by Bedouins in the wild, in particular in the Wadi El Laki Biosphere Reserve, in Sudan the shrub has been “tamed” and industrialized the preparation of medicinal raw materials for sale both domestically and for export.

Healing abilities

Hargal's amazing endurance and unpretentiousness endowed the plant with unique healing abilities. In its aboveground parts, scientists have counted fifty active compounds capable of coping with many human ailments. Along with the usual list of diseases that traditional healers treat with herbs, Hargal is able to help in more difficult situations.

Diseases of the digestive system, respiration, urinary tract; pain in the kidneys and uterus; treatment of sciatica, syphilis, jaundice, allergies - subject to a healing decoction from Hargal leaves.

If you need to heal a weakened nervous system, neutralize pathogens that have penetrated the human circulatory system, an infusion of flowers and leaves of Hargal will come to the rescue.

Purulent wounds are treated with crushed leaves of the plant.

In case of visual impairment, the juice of the leaves, used in the form of drops, will help. The juice will cope with a hysterical and exhausting cough.

But Hargal's greatest value is his ability to regulate the work of the pancreas, which is responsible for the amount of insulin in the body, and fearlessness in the fight against cancer cells, the growth of which Hargal can inhibit.

When treating Hargalem, it is important to dose its amount so as not to harm health

Where people are pestered by mosquitoes, including malaria, they resort to the help of Hargal, who can destroy their larvae.