A Fabulous Carpet Of Meadows. Part 3

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

It is difficult to find a person who would not be familiar with the messenger of spring medicinal dandelion, if not in bloom, then at least in fruits, with silvery-white balls of seeds. Very widespread. A valuable medicinal and food plant. In the meadows of the plain, there is a late dandelion, the flowering of which lasts until December

Many species of hawks with yellow flowers are quite natural in the meadows. They differ in that the upper side of the sheet has bristles, and the lower side is covered with “felt”. They go green under the snow, which is why it is sometimes called underripe. Very volatile and difficult to define. They are considered phenomena of the plant kingdom due to the ability to set seeds without fertilization. According to Greek legends, this herb retains the sharpness of a hawk's vision (hence its name).

Probably familiar to everyone

yarrow

The most memorable thing with him is the leaves are three times pinnately dissected. Flowers are collected in baskets. This is a common and widespread plant of meadows, pastures, steppes. It has long been used in medicine. Fresh leaves and flowers emit phytoncides. Preparations from it treat diseases of the stomach and intestines, are used to stimulate appetite, as a hemostatic and sedative. The species of the family are abundant among the meadow grasses

umbrella … In some places they even dominate. Almost everywhere in mountain meadows you can find

voluschu, original astrantia, caraway, low-umbel - an alpine tumbleweed plant that can withstand butchery, femoral saxifrage, winged ligusticum with silvery stems. In the meadows the plain is common

wild carrot with hairy stems.

Common caraway - a well-known plant of meadows. It is often found in meadows and pastures. If you ate Borodino bread, you will feel its specific "caraway" flavor, which is given to it by caraway seeds. The root is also used as a spice and the young leaves are used as a condiment. The seeds are widely used in the canning, confectionery and bakery industries.

Hogweed - perhaps the most gigantic of our meadow grasses. Its ribbed stem sometimes reaches 2, 5 m. Unusual size heavy trifoliate, wide, like a burdock, leaves, dissected into large lobes - rough, woolly. When dry, they become brittle, rotten. For its such an unusual appearance and powerful appearance, the hogweed was called by botanists “Hercules herb”. The people call this green giant a bear's paw, pork pipes.

There are hogweed in floodplain meadows, among tall grasses, in roadside weeds, on old sheepskins and the remains of a dwelling. Usually grows with burdocks, thistles, cockleburs and other herbs. Gravitates mainly towards mountainous regions. It settles on talus and landslides.

We have a rough, Sosnovsky hogweed and an endemic to the Central Caucasus, an Ossetian hogweed found in the headwaters of the Ardon River. As soon as the snow melts, this mighty grass immediately begins to grow. Its growth on subalpine tall-grass meadows and on avalanche trays reaches three meters, the weight of the stem with leaves is up to six kilograms. Petioles and stems are fistulous. The stem grows, lengthening by 10 cm per day. It is a valuable silage and edible plant. Quite good honey plant. Does not tolerate mowing and grazing.

In the "jungle" thickets of hogweed and other huge herbaceous plants, you can get lost. Grass growth is noticeably accelerated here. As in a fairy tale, they grow by leaps and bounds. In the fall, the mass of greenery dies off, is covered with snow, over the winter it overheats, forming humus. Abundantly moistened by melt water, which stimulates development, hogweed and angelica grow luxuriously and give a lot of greenery. When blooming, the thickets turn white, exude a honey aroma.

Sosnovsky's hogweed develops such a colossal mass of greenery that corn growers can envy it, considering corn to be the record holder for the accumulation of greenery. In thickets of hogweed it is dark as in a forest. Few grasses that can keep up with the hogweed and its relative angelica grow in such "grassy forests" - tall grasses or "umbrella" forests. Woody ones are "not allowed" into these thickets. Their seeds here perish from lack of light and harmful secretions for sprouts of other plants.

The tall grasses are believed to have the same antiquity as the tropical rain forest. Plant gigantism in grasses is an interesting phenomenon in our meadow flora.