Tanacetum balsamita

Pennyroyal

The pennyroyal ( Tanacetum balsamita ), also called balm herb leaf or Marie, is a medicinal plant from the sunflower family ( Asteraceae).

Description

The woman mint is a perennial, herbaceous plant with a strong root system. Through its rhizome it forms foothills which form large clumps. The branched and fluffy hairy stems reach a stature height between 80 and 150 centimeters. The leathery, undivided, oblong to ovate, serrate on the edge, bluish - green leaves are up to 20 centimeters long, are long stalks and finely hairy on the underside.

The late summer appearing doldigen panicles contain many yellow-green tubular flowers, which have a diameter of 4-8 millimeters and smell strongly ethereal. Ray florets are usually absent.

The plant contains numerous essential oils, including camphor and thujone.

Dissemination

This plant is native to the Caucasus, but has been naturalized in Southern Europe as archaeophyte and can today be found wild in the German-speaking countries.

Use as a garden and medicinal plant

The first mention of this species under the name costum is found in the well in the last decade of the 8th century by Charlemagne adopted the Great Estates Regulation Capitulare de vel curtis imperii villis. The interpretation of the costum as pennyroyal goes back to Johann Friedrich August children Lings notes to Capitulare de villis from 1799 and was subsequently by Kurt Sprengel, Anton Kerner, Rudolf von Fischer- Benzon, Hermann Fischer and Heinrich Marzell accepted and confirmed. Among other things of late medieval botanists termed costus ( hortorum ) pennyroyal served as a substitute for the " once in medicine esteemed food root ", the Indian Kostuswurzel ( Saussurea costus ) that can not be taken in the field in Europe. Is supported the assumption that is meant by costum or costus the pennyroyal, through today at the Italian common name of the plant as erba costa, erba Costina, but in Greece it is called costus in the St. Gall Monastery Plan created in the early 9th century is a bed for. the plant costo provided a further mention is found in the documents drawn up in the year 827 didactic poem Liber de cultura hortorum ( Hortulus ) of Walahfrid Strabo within the description of the plant Sclarea (Salvia sclarea ). According Stoffler indeed clear from the Hortulus " clearly indicates that Costus was pulled in the convent garden ", however, it is unclear whether this Tanacetum L. balsamita or Tanacetum balsamitoides Schultz. Bip. was meant.

The first modern herbal book that mentions the pennyroyal, is the first published in 1539 The Kreütter book, Darinn Under Scheidt, name vnnd Würckung the Kreutter, shrubs, hedges vnnd Beumen ... by Hieronymus Bock, who not only provides a detailed description of the plant, but also their use as inward and outward remedies describes: in " wine boiled vnnd getruncken " they help against various animal poisons, " appeases even the belly river / and the Pommern in the flesh " as applied externally as " Fomenta [ envelopes ] and sweat baths auss the herb " is the pennyroyal promoting menstruation and relieves pain; " The herb crushed VND patch white auffgelegt / zertheilt the hard nodules / tumor- VND others."

Conrad Gesner mentions in 1561 the pennyroyal in his work Horti Germaniae under the name ovaria (eggs herb), probably because - as Marzell accepts - " the leaves were used as a spice to egg dishes in the kitchen ." The plant was mentioned from that time until the 19th century regularly in drug lists, but then fell into oblivion. In the first third of the 20th century, the physician M. forehead needle described the beneficial effects of pennyroyal gall blader.