English name:
Prickly chaff-flower.
Description:
Herbaceous plant about 1m. high. Stems erect, pubescent, swollen at the nodes. Leaves opposite, short-petioled, margins undulate. Flowers numerous, stiffly deflected against the pubescent rachis in elongate terminal spike, 20-30 cm. long. Utricle oblong-cylindrical, enclosed in the hardened perianth, brown. Seeds oblong-ovoid.
Flowering period:
July - December.
Distribution:
Grows wild along roadsides.
Parts used:
The whole, plant, especially the roots. Collected throughout the year, they are carefully washed and sun-dried or heat-dried.
Chemical composition:
The roots contain triterpenoid saponins that on hydrolysis give oleanolic acid and a sugar portion consisting of glucose, galactose and rhamnose.
Therapeutic uses:
The whole plant and especially the roots, characterized by their anti-inflammatory and uterine stimulant activity, are prescribed in the therapy of rheumatism, contusions, lumbago, osteodynia, dysuria, post-partum haematometra and dysmenorrhoea. The daily dose is 8 to 16g in the form of a decoction. The drug is used on its own or in combination with some other plants.
Source:Medicinal plants in Viet Nam (Institute of Materia Medica - HANOI - WHO/WPRO, 1990, 444 p.)
And then there's this: "Children begin studying the multiple uses of medicinal plants in primary school." This is a good idea! Steal it!
ReplyDeleteI'm starting to read Alongside Night. The beginning thus far reminds me a little of the 1980's movie "Cloak and Dagger". The boy's encounter with a hooker his age was a little seedy - I wouldn't recommend this book to the young reader. While this seedy part is probably necessary for realism in a future with anarchist elements, there are ways of depicting hookers and their trade in ways that leave more to the imagination. It's like the old Alfred Hitchcock movies being more suspenseful than any of the new suspenseful horror genre, especially because of what was left to the imagination.
ReplyDeleteAs to the idea that God wouldn't have made certain herbs if they didn't have uses, I agree that there are valid medicinal uses of such plants as you mentioned. Glaucoma patients have benefitted from using marijuana medicinally. Opium has greatly aided in alleviating suffering of dying patients, and coca plants certainly have helped indigenous peoples acclimate better to high altitudes. However I won't deny that such herbs can't be misused. Whether man should strictly enforce the use of such herbs by establishing laws making the traffic and/or possession of such substances illegal for those not using it for legally defined uses is still a subject I haven't fully resolved in my mind. Certainly I don't believe that it was right for the government to outlaw alcohol during the Prohibition. Nor am I for sin taxes such as increasingly exorbitant cigarette taxes. However some drugs are simply so addictive that the traffic and use of them dooms individuals to a life of dependency and addiction. Surely you wouldn't want a society where your child could be so easily exposed to substances that they didn't know were so addictive that one would actually kill and steal just to have the next fix from such substances. When something definitively induces society to kill, steal, and neglect one's own, then the law certainly needs to be applied. Unless of course you really believe in total anarchy, which I don't. I simply believe that when government becomes so oppressive as it is becoming, that institutions like the free market that once were able to exist in the open framework of society can only survive and thrive by going underground, and sometimes out of necessity sharing such underground marketplaces with seedier elements. While unfortunate, that may be necessary.