Four-leaf cranberry, or swamp cranberry.

An evergreen lodging shrub of the lingonberry family, up to 80 cm high. The adventitious roots are thin. The stems are filamentous, highly branched, and sometimes rooted. Leaves. small, leathery, oblong-ovate, green above, silvery below, covered with a waxy coating. Blooms in May - June.

The flowers are small, whitish-pink, drooping, located on long stalks at the ends of the shoots. The fruit is a dark red spherical-oblong berry with juicy pulp. Ripens in September-early October.

It remains on the plant until spring.

Four-petalled cranberries are common in the tundra and forest-steppe zones of the European part of Russia, in Siberia and the Far East. Grows in sphagnum bogs and swampy forests.

Used in the food industry and in households for making jam, fruit drinks, jelly, as an additive for pickling cabbage and as a red food coloring. Fruit squeezes can serve as a tea substitute. Store cranberries in water (soaked) or mashed with sugar.

It serves as food for geese, partridges, black grouse, bears, and martens. Requires protection. Introduced into culture.

Fruits serve as medicinal raw materials. They are collected in September - October and even later, before the snow. Cranberries collected in spring are tastier than autumn ones, but are almost devoid of vitamins.

Berries contain carbohydrates - glucose, fructose; sucrose, sorbitol, organic acids - quinic, citric, benzoic, malic, essential oil, vitamin C, carotene, phenol carbonic acids, tannins, flavonoids, anthocyanins, iodine and potassium salts. Triterpenoids and flavonoids (quercetin, mericetin, hyperin) were found in the leaves.

A wide range of biologically active substances suggests the use of cranberry extracts for many diseases in order to improve appetite and food absorption.

Fresh fruit, juice, fruit drink, syrup, jelly and jam increase the secretion of gastric and pancreatic secretions. They are used to treat gastritis with low acidity and inflammation of the pancreas. They prevent the formation of kidney stones, have a positive effect on diseases of the urinary tract and liver, rheumatism and malaria, have an antipyretic effect on fevers of various origins due to their diaphoretic and diuretic effects, and quench thirst.

Juice with honey is taken for sore throat and bronchitis with cough.

Cranberry juice has a weak bactericidal effect, which is enhanced in combination with antibiotics. It is used for gynecological inflammatory diseases, anemia, pulmonary tuberculosis, atherosclerosis and headaches.

Cranberry drinks are a source of vitamin C. Externally, in the form of a paste, the berries are used for bedsores and in cosmetics to remove age spots.

Cranberry ointment has anti-inflammatory and antiseptic effects. skin diseases. To prepare it, 2 tablespoons of ripe berries are ground and squeezed through cheesecloth. The resulting juice is mixed with lanolin and petroleum jelly, taken 50 g each.

Store in the refrigerator.

To prepare fruit juice, berries are washed in boiled water and the juice is squeezed into a porcelain or glass container. The pomace is poured with cold water at the rate of 3-4 liters per 100 g, boiled and filtered.

Juice and sugar (to taste) are added to the resulting broth. Drink 2-3 glasses per day, warming to room temperature. Cranberries are contraindicated for gastric and duodenal ulcers