2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38
I remember the plant with the romantic name "Shepherd's bag" from school, when in a botany lesson the task was given to make a herbarium of this plant. I remember very well that herbarium. But, we were either not told about the amazing abilities of this viable and ubiquitous plant, or the information disappeared without a trace from my head. With the advent of the Internet, my new acquaintance with this plant took place, which caused surprise and admiration for the nondescript-looking creation of nature
What's in your name
Shepherd's purse (lat. Capsella) is not one plant, but 9 plant species with the same morphology, united by botanists into a genus that bears this name. All species can be easily recognized during the period of their fruiting by the specific shape of the fruit of plants, similar to miniature hearts.
To botanists, these hearts seemed to be a semblance of "boxes or old chests", so they gave the genus the Latin name "Capsella", the meaning of which is "box" or "small chest". The English-speaking people, comparing the shape of the fruit with the bag of shepherds, who in ancient times wandered a lot in European pastures, gave the plants their name - "Shepherd's purse", which in our language sounds like "Shepherd's bag".
An unpretentious and prolific weed
A shepherd's bag is an extremely unpretentious creation of nature. He is not afraid of either the poverty of the soil, or the frosty weather, or the dry summer. Appearing on the surface of the earth in April, the plant already in May begins to bloom and set its miniature and graceful fruits.
Such an intense life continues until stable frosts, which allows the Shepherd's bag in one summer season to reveal 2-3 generations of plants to the world, surprising gardeners and field workers: it seems, they just pulled out all the weeds, lo and behold, and they again reach for the sun, rustling leaves and waving shepherd's bags.
Experiments carried out by scientists have shown the fantastic fertility of the plant in favorable conditions for it. One plant during the spring-summer-autumn period managed to produce about 60 thousand seeds.
By the way, the seeds also have fantastic endurance and can wait 6-7 years in the soil for their hour to germinate on the surface of the earth as an annual herb.
Either the Almighty originally laid such a fabulous endurance in the plant, or the plant itself, over many millions of years of life on the planet, has adapted so well to life without fear of climatic cataclysms.
Medicinal properties of the plant
Of course, such extraordinary abilities of the Shepherd's bag for survival are not at all pleasing to gardeners, for whom the plant is a weed. But, as wise people say, a person counts in the weeds those plants that he has not yet had time to study, and therefore, instead of putting their abilities at his service, he declares an irreconcilable war on them.
Since ancient times, observant folk healers have liked the medicinal abilities of an unpretentious plant that grows everywhere without any regard for the convenience or inconvenience of being. They were followed by official medicine, which, having studied the chemical composition of the plant, began to use the aboveground part for the production of medicines.
The most amazing thing is that in the chemical composition of the above-ground parts of the Shepherd's purse, no particularly outstanding or unearthly elixirs of youth were found. It contains vitamins familiar to everyone (A, B2, C), a number of familiar micro and macro elements, alkaloids …, but these components manage to work wonders when it is necessary to stop bleeding, including if it is internal bleeding, then drugs are the leader in this matter from the Shepherd's bag.
A shepherd's bag is able to cope with the inflammatory process in the human body, cleanse the blood vessels of harmful aliens, calm down the unbalanced nervous system.
In addition, all aerial parts of the plant are suitable for human nutrition.
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