Daisy Perennial

Compositae - Asteraceae (Compositae). Common names: eye flower, heavenly flower, May flower, mask. Parts used: inflorescences and leaves. Pharmacy name: daisy flowers - Bellidis flos (formerly: Flores Bellidis), daisy leaves - Bellidis folium (formerly: Folia Bellidis).

Botanical description. This frequently encountered plant hardly needs a detailed description, since most readers have known it as a flower for weaving wreaths since childhood.

The daisy forms a rosette of leaves, from which grows a short (up to 10 cm) leafless peduncle. At its top sits a single basket with white reed flowers (they are usually reddish at the bottom edges) and yellow tubular ones in the central part. In sunlight the baskets open wide, but at night and when it rains they close and droop.

It blooms from the first days of spring until late autumn. Fields, meadows, gardens and roadsides are the favorite habitats of the daisy, which especially gravitates to clay soils.

Collection and preparation. Daisy can be prepared almost all year round, but the greatest effectiveness is attributed to raw materials collected around June 24 (Ivan Kupala Day), since at this time the development of the plant reaches its apogee. Both inflorescences and leaves are collected and then thoroughly air dried.

Active ingredients: saponins, bitters, tannins, some essential oil, anthoxanthin and flavonoids.

Healing action and application. Scientific medicine does not recognize the daisy, although it appears to be extremely effective in tea mixtures intended to stimulate general metabolism.

Use in folk medicine. The daisy was extremely highly valued in the Middle Ages. Leonard Fuchs (1543) writes: “The daisy is extremely good for paralyzed members, for gout and hip disease, it also retracts goiter; it generally removes coarse moisture.” A. Lonitser (1564) reports: “For cramps, boil daisy in good wine, drink it when you go to bed - it helps. For spots on the body, boil this herb with roots in rainwater, wash the stains with it - they will go away. Daisy heals wounds , cools the liver, extinguishes the heat inside." P. Mattiolus and Hieronymus Bock especially praise its effectiveness in healing wounds. Modern folk medicine uses this medicinal plant to stimulate appetite, as a gastric and choleretic agent, for liver diseases, but above all as a blood purifier.

It is also used for coughs and skin diseases. For unclean skin, washing with tea made from the herb daisy and violet tricolor in equal parts, which is prepared by cold extract, helps.

Side effects are unknown.