Crowberry

Crowberry – a plant from family heather. Other names to a crowberry – a crowberry, a crowberry. For growth she chooses light places, she can be met in the tundra, crevices of rocks, in the pine woods and on swamps. Well the crowberry on acid soils grows.

The Latin name of a plant is translated as "on a stone" that adequately reflects conditions of his life. According to other theory, the crowberry received the name because has the expressed diuretic properties. On ability to strengthen formation of urine its action is comparable with water-melon pulp.

Externally the plant to a crowberry has an appearance of an undersized creeping bush which length of stalks sometimes reaches 1 meter. The surface of branches is covered with white or amber dot pieces of iron. Escapes have dark-brown color, strongly branch and are densely covered with small leaflets. Leaflets are narrow, the extended form, up to 10 mm long, their edges are twisted from top to bottom because of what are similar to fir-tree needles. Leaves keep on a branch not less than 5 years, and life expectancy of the plant up to 100 years.

Flowers to a crowberry ordinary-looking, small, with pink or red coloring of petals, they appear in April - May. An edema at small clearings – kurtinka grows. She lives in symbiosis with mushrooms, receiving from them a number of mineral substances, and in exchange giving the products formed in the course of photosynthesis.

The crowberry in August black or red berries with a rigid thin skin and seeds fructifies. Outside they are covered with a glaucescent plaque and remind bilberry berries a little. Juice inside to a crowberry of purple color and very watery. Because of the low content of sugars and acids it fresh on taste that is also reflected in the name of berry. Fruits winter on branches of a plant and remain on escapes till spring.

Use to a crowberry

In the north the crowberry is rather widely eaten, soaked or fresh, adding it to milk. In cookery it found application in production of wine, drinks, jams, seasonings to fish dishes. Berries to a crowberry are included into the list of obligatory ingredients of a tolokusha – the traditional northern crushed fish and seal fat dish. For storage for the winter the crowberry is presoaked in barrels where it long remains thanks to availability of the benzoic acid as a part of berries. Also fruits well keep the useful properties in the frozen look.

From berries of this plant in old times received dye for wool. Juice to a crowberry contains a pigment of anthocyanins which gives resistant red color of fabric.

Decorative grades to a crowberry which are successfully used in registration of the Alpine hills are removed. The crowberry black was cultivated long ago and parted for the purpose of receiving fruits. Make multiple copies it seeds and shanks.

Useful properties to a crowberry

In structure to a crowberry there are tannins, flavonoids, saponins, alkaloids, coumarins, pitches, essential and fat oils, a number of vitamins.

The crowberry was long since applied with the medical purpose, and both berries, and vegetative escapes with leaves. It improves a metabolism, is applied at the general exhaustion, headaches. Thanks to the high content of vitamin C the crowberry strengthens immunity, helps to struggle with infectious and catarrhal diseases, warns Page hypovitaminosis symptoms.

Infusion from branches has wound healing effect in case of grazes, scratches and cuts. Especially popularly this means at peoples of the North. Broth of roots to a crowberry sometimes is used in treatment of diseases of eyes.

Curative properties to a crowberry are applied at treatment of diseases of a liver and kidneys, a nervous system (especially at epilepsy and paralyzes), digestive tract. The crowberry well helps at hypostases as its berries and a grass possess diuretic action.

With the cosmetology purpose broth from leaves to a crowberry is applied to strengthening of hair. Bathtubs with a grass to a crowberry apply at diseases of a peripheral nervous system.

Care in the use of berries is required to a crowberry only in case of its individual intolerance.