Flora
Coltsfoot

Coltsfoot

Distribution

 Perennial plant, widespread in Eurasia (the whole territory of Western Europe, the Urals, Western Siberia (south of 59º northern latitude), Eastern Siberia (south of 63º northern latitude), Kazakhstan, the mountains of Central Asia and South Siberia, Asia Minor) and North Africa, and also (as an alien plant) in North America. In the European sector it enters the Arctic (Arctic Scandinavia, Murmansk region, Kanin peninsula, Kolguyev, Malozemelskaya and Bolshezemelskaya tundra).

Usually found on sites free of turf - the banks of water bodies, on the slopes of ravines and landslides, often in areas subjected to anthropogenic impact - fields, vacant lots, landfills. It prefers clay soils, but is also found on soils of a different type, including sand and pebble banks. The usual flowering time in the European part of Russia is in April.

Drug Administration

As a medicinal raw material used sheet mother-and-stepmother (lat. Folium Farfarae), which is harvested in the spring, dried in air or in a dryer at a temperature of 40-50 ° C.

The leaves of coltsfoot, containing mucus, which causes an emollient, enveloping and expectorant effect, the bitter glycoside tussilyagin, tannin, tannins, carotenoids and sterols, are part of the chest collection; in folk medicine, this plant is used for many diseases.

Biologically active substances have a complex effect on inflammatory processes. Coltsfoot is a traditional cough remedy, especially for whooping cough, as well as mucous sputum. Tea from it can facilitate coughing, make viscous bronchial mucus more liquid. It is used in chronic bronchitis, laryngitis, bronchopneumonia, bronchiectasis and bronchial asthma.

Biological Description

Rhizome long, branched, creeping. From the buds on the rhizome, two types of shoots develop: flowering plants and vegetative ones.

In early spring, upright low flowering shoots begin to develop, covered with ovate-lanceolate, often brownish, scaly leaves. A single head develops on each of the shoots, before flowering and after flowering, a drooping head consisting of a cylindrical single-row coverlet, bare flat receptacle and bright yellow flowers of two types. Numerous outer (marginal) flowers - female, reed (clearly pronounced reed of marginal flowers is a diagnostic sign, according to which the coltsfoot differs from plants of the genus Bleachypernik, in which this reed is unclear, the rims are almost threadlike, and the number of edge flowers is relatively small ), fertile. Flowers that are in the middle of the inflorescence - bisexual, tubular, infertile.

The fruit is a cylindrical achene, with a pappus (tuft) of soft hairs. After fruit ripening, flowering shoots die off.

Some time after the beginning of flowering, vegetative shoots begin to develop, which carry several relatively large rounded-heart-shaped, slightly angular (angularly-uneven-toothed) from the bottom of the white-cell, above the bare leaves with long petioles.