Calla Is A Poisonous Decoration Of Ponds

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

Calla can often be seen in swampy and humid places, as well as on the swampy coastline of various bodies of water. As a decorative element, it is very popular in landscape design. Calla is poisonous, but it is also used in folk medicine. With such an amazing plant, which is ready to put up with even temporary drying out of reservoirs, it is definitely worth getting to know better. In Russia, it can be seen in its European part, as well as in the Far East and Siberia

Getting to know the plant

Calla is a beautiful herbaceous wetland and coastal plant, a bright representative of the Aroid family (which is also called Aronnikovs). The creeping rhizomes of this perennial are hollow and slightly thick, and the rhizomes creeping along the substrate are colored dark green. The roots are white, with blunt, slightly rounded tips. Single leaves vertically directed upward have an oval-heart-shaped shape; the edges of the leaves are smooth, and the tips are slightly pointed. The leaflets are shiny and rather thick, with a rich green tint on top, and a little paler on the back.

The flowering of the beautiful calla begins in May (in the second half of it), and ends around the middle of June. Numerous small (no more than 1 cm) and spiral-shaped flowers include from six to ten stamens and form cylindrical elongated beautiful inflorescences-cobs.

Calla fruits look very colorful - attractive bright red berries ripen about 30 days after flowering and, like flowers, they are collected in small cylindrical buds. Each berry contains seeds - from three to twelve pieces. Ripe berries are filled with an elastic, slightly gelatinous and transparent substance, located mainly above the seeds. Mature seeds have small grooves and are brown in color, and not separated from the berry pulp, the seeds are purple, turning brown only when they are freed from the pulp.

Useful properties of calla

Amateur gardeners, along with landscape designers, have chosen this beautiful aquatic man for use in gardens and parks as a decorative element in the design of various reservoirs.

Calla is also widely used for medical purposes. A decoction of its rhizomes was drunk when edema and dropsy appeared, and leaves cooked in milk, applied to sore fingers, saved them from osteomyelitis or panaritium. Compresses from fresh rhizomes helped to pull hairs out of the body and needles. All parts of a peculiar plant acted as a pain reliever in the presence of syphilitic ulcers, as well as with annoying rheumatism.

In Yakutia, where calla was called "cleaver", he served as an excellent diuretic, saving from the 17th century from urinary retention. Its fruits also did not go unnoticed - with severe constipation and umbilical hernia, they were offered to children. The fruits were also a fairly good remedy for various malignant neoplasms, they helped well with polyps in the nose, and a decoction of the underground part of the plant was used as an antifebrile and expectorant agent, and was also used for headaches, gastric hypofunction and hypoxia.

In folk medicine, there is a recipe for tincture of rhizomes used for bites of poisonous snakes. The Iroquois Indians used the decoction of stems and roots (along with freshly ground underground parts) as poultices for dangerous snakebites, and the Potawatomi Indians cured tumors with crushed root poultices.

To cure the flu with colds, from all kinds of bleeding, as well as from shortness of breath in a number of regions, to this day, tea from dried calla roots is used.

And the juice squeezed out of the underground part of the plant can be used against harmful gypsy moth caterpillars as an insecticidal agent - such juice exhibits pronounced protistocidal and phytoncidal activity.

Growing calla

Calla reproduces in two ways: either vegetatively (breaking off renewal buds or rhizomes), or by seeds. With the onset of autumn, the cobs fall into the water or onto damp ground, as a result of which the swollen fruits quickly burst, releasing perfectly floating seeds with air cavities from the berries. One ear contains 350 to 400 seeds. Sprouted seeds begin to take root in dead vegetation.

Calla is usually planted to a depth of 5-10 cm. To avoid water bloom, instead of mesh containers, it can be planted in containers with holes only at the bottom or even in ordinary pots. The pots are filled with soil, after which the soil should be covered with oily clay on top (with a layer of 2 cm), otherwise the nutrients may be washed out into the water. When the calla grows, a certain part of it will be outside the pots, and the additionally formed roots will begin to receive nutrients directly from the water, thereby significantly improving its quality. Periodically, the plant must be thinned and cut off excess shoots.