Elf Narrow-leaved.

Elf Narrow-leaved

A small tree or shrub of the sucker family, 3-7 m high. The bark is shiny or brownish-brown, the branches are equipped with large spines. The leaves are alternate, elongated-elliptic, entire, green above, greenish-silver below.

Blooms in May - June. The flowers are fragrant, lemon-yellow inside, silvery-white outside. The fruit is an oblong-oval drupe. Ripens in September.

Elf angustifolia is common in the Caucasus and Central Asia. It grows along the banks of rivers, lakes and in oases of the mid-mountain zone.

Sucker gum is used for calico printing, book printing, making glue, paints and varnishes, and the bark is used for dyeing fabrics brown and black and for tanning leather. The wood is used to make musical instruments. The leaves are food for goats, sheep and camels.

The fruits are eaten fresh and dried as a seasoning for main courses. You can use them to make flour, bread, confectionery, pastille, syrup and kvass.

The medicinal raw materials are leaves, flowers and fruits. Leaves are collected in the first half of summer, flowers - during the flowering period. Leaves are dried under a canopy or in a dryer at a temperature of 40-50°C, flowers - no more than 40°C, fruits in the usual way.

Various parts of the oleaster contain flavonoids, coumarins, alkaloids, gum, cyclitols, catechins, vitamin C, phenolcarboxylic acids, essential oil, carbohydrates, tannins and steroids.

Loja preparations exhibit hypotensive, anti-inflammatory, wound-healing, diuretic, antipyretic, astringent, anthelmintic and expectorant effects.

Fresh leaves of the plant are applied to purulent wounds to relieve inflammation and speed up the healing process. Flowers are used for respiratory diseases, heart diseases, and fever. The fruits are used as an expectorant, astringent, anti-inflammatory and anthelmintic.

Thus, Eleven angustifolia is a valuable medicinal plant, widely used in folk medicine.