The article deals with the most useful herb called Bird Highlander, or among the common people - knotweed. What are the uses of trample grass and why is it so useful that it helps to heal. Bird highlander is a medicinal plant from the Buckwheat family. People also call it knotweed, goose grass, or trample grass. The plant got the name "knotweed" due to its ability to grow very quickly, "sportively" after damage, "trample-grass" - for its resistance to trampling.
Bird Highlander - is an annual weed plant with a rising or creeping knotty stem up to 60 cm long. The leaves are alternate, small, equipped with white filmy bells from accreted stipules. In the axils of the leaves there are 1-5 small flowers with a five-membered simple perianth. The flower lobes are greenish, with a white or pink border. Fruits - black triangular nuts, ripen in August - September.
Highlander bird: its application
Knotweed is a valuable medicinal plant found almost everywhere. This plant is used as an anti-inflammatory, diuretic, used as a metabolism regulator for kidney stones (like parsley: read about the benefits of parsley) and gall bladder. In Western European folk medicine, bird knotweed was used to improve appetite and increase body weight in patients with tuberculosis. Fees containing bird knotweed are used for pneumonia. Also, the juice of fresh knotweed is successfully used to treat purulent wounds.
In modern scientific medicine, the plant is used mainly in obstetrics and gynecology as a uterine, hemostatic and diuretic. The collection, which in equal parts includes the grass of the mountaineers - bird and grass, St. John's wort, dried fruit, horsetail, plantain is used in the treatment of hemorrhoids at the rate of a third of a glass three times a day before meals.
The plant's preparations have an astringent, diuretic, anti-inflammatory effect. Knotweed lowers blood pressure, and also removes excess trace elements such as sodium and chlorine from the body. The plant contains significant amounts of silicic acid, as a result of which the use of preparations from Knotweed is contraindicated in patients suffering from acute diseases of the kidneys and bladder.
In addition to its medicinal properties, it is also a food and forage plant. Young shoots of the plant are used for food, used for making salads, soups, mashed potatoes. In Dagestan cuisine, pies stuffed with poultry knotweed are common. As a fodder plant it is of particular value as food for poultry, for which it received another name among the people “goose grass”. A blue dye used to dye leather and fabrics was extracted from the ground parts of the plant in Russia.
How to harvest grass
The herb of the plant should be harvested in dry weather during flowering, from May to September, and dried in bags in the air or in a well-ventilated area. As soon as the stems of the plant begin to break, the raw material is considered ready for storage. The harvested grass should be stored for no more than three years.
From a botanical point of view, the term "bird highlander" refers to a group of similar, extremely difficult to distinguish species that inhabit the entire territory of the globe, except for the Arctic and Antarctic. It is found in fields, river banks, roads, dumps, meadows, pastures, near human habitation, etc. One of the human companion species. The habitats of the mountaineer bird gravitate towards the zones, the natural vegetation covers of which are disturbed due to various types of human activities. The bird's mountaineer is extremely resistant to trampling, uprooting and removal of aerial parts; it quickly recovers after significant damage.
