2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38
Six hundred years BC, when people tried to leave their experience to descendants, the Assyrian king with a very long name Ashurbanipala wrote on a clay tablet about the ability of the barberry plant to “purify blood”. It was also used as a medicine in Ancient Babylon, in India. This beautiful plant is still popular today
Distribution in nature
Barberry is a inhabitant of the Northern Hemisphere and grows on all continents lying on the north side of the equator. It is found in the wild in Russia, in its forest-steppe zone of the European part, in the Ciscaucasia and Eastern Siberia. Barberry bushes choose treeless areas, growing on them in large clumps. Most of all he likes to settle on dry steppe and rocky slopes, because he does not like stagnant water. Prefers alkaline soils, located on chalk deposits and river gravel.
Description
Barberry is an evergreen or deciduous shrub, less often small trees. With its powerful superficial root system, it firmly clings to the soil, easily growing into impassable thickets.
Its thin, ribbed, erect stems are covered with many 2 cm thorns, which help barberry hedges to resist unwanted aliens.
Elliptical finely serrated leaves have different colors: they are dark green above, and bluish-green below. But they have such a color in the summer, and by autumn the leaves become orange-red, giving a fantastic uniqueness to the autumn garden.
The racemose inflorescences, collected from 15-25 bright yellow flowers, reach a length of 6 centimeters.
Fruits are bright red berries up to 1 centimeter long.
Growing
Barberry is a relatively unpretentious plant. He is not afraid of drought and does not like stagnant water.
It tolerates partial shade, but may not please with its berries in such conditions. For a bountiful harvest and fruitful growth, the bushes should be planted in lighted places.
Prefers calcareous soils, growing very quickly on them.
The plant is propagated by seeds. Sowing is carried out before winter in open ground. Seeds that have wintered under the snow in the spring sprout, which are planted and grown for another 2-3 years before being planted in a permanent place.
Can also be propagated vegetatively. To do this, green cuttings are rooted in cold greenhouses, or rooted by layering and dividing the bush.
Use in the garden
Late spring - early summer barberry adorns the garden with its abundant bright yellow bloom. Then its decorativeness is slightly reduced and flares up with orange-red shades in the fall, when its berries ripen and the leaves dress up in fall colors. Clusters of berries hang until late autumn and decorate the garden in winter.
Barberry is very democratic. It can decorate the lawn in a single planting, or it can grow quietly next to other ornamental plants in a mixborder.
It is easy to create hedges and dividing living walls from it in order to divide the suburban area into different functional zones. Its stems are easy to cut, allowing you to form all kinds of shapes from the bushes. In this regard, it will perfectly replace the more fastidious boxwood.
Healing properties
Juice or jelly from barberry berries perfectly increase the appetite of children.
Barberry preparations lower blood pressure, stabilize cardiac activity, which was known to our legendary ancestors.
In addition, barberry is famous for its calming, antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, hemostatic, astringent, antipyretic, choleretic and diuretic effects.
Barberry helps to restore salt metabolism in the body; with osteochondrosis and metabolic arthritis.
Collection and procurement
Flowers are harvested at the beginning of flowering; leaves - during budding or flowering; fruits when fully ripe; roots - in late autumn.
Dried in the usual way. In dryers at a temperature not exceeding 45 degrees.
Contraindications: Prohibition for pregnant women. Due to the slight toxicity of leaves and roots, an overdose is unacceptable.
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