Coltsfoot. Legend and real origin of the name of the flower “Coltsfoot” The story of the grass “Mother and Stepmother”

Today I was walking with a camera. What a beauty - coltsfoot! It’s still cool, there’s snow here and there, the buds on the trees are just beginning to swell, but this modest plant is already delighting everyone with its sunny flowers!

And here is the story about where coltsfoot got its name:

Like little suns, coltsfoot flowers shine across the clay hills, along the banks of streams and lowlands. In places warmed by the sun, the inflorescences of this herb glow yellow. This herb has a strange name: coltsfoot. And it is connected with the structure of the leaf: on top the leaf is dark green, shiny and smooth, and on the bottom the leaves are covered with a thick layer of whitish hairs. Apply such a leaf to your cheek with the outer side - and you will feel a harsh chill, but now turn the leaf over and apply it with the other side - and you will feel warmth and tenderness. Here's your mother's warmth and your stepmother's coldness! Only in early spring You won’t find any leaves from this herb. They will appear much later - already in the summer... But scientific name(Tussilago farfara L.) is associated with the medicinal properties of coltsfoot leaves and means “cough”. This excellent cough remedy has been known since ancient times. Young leaves are used for medicinal purposes, and decoctions and tinctures are prepared from them. But this is in the summer, and in the spring - these are little suns on a still dull earth!

(lat. Tussilago) - a genus of perennials herbaceous plants family Asteraceae, or Asteraceae ( Asteraceae). The only kind is Common mother and stepmother (Tussilago farfara). Popularly, this plant has many names - mother grass, water burdock, icy burdock, burdock, two-leaf, butterbur. The grass is widespread throughout Eurasia ( Western Europe, Siberia, Kazakhstan, mountains of Central and Asia Minor), North Africa and North America. For growth, mother and stepmother prefer clay and moist soils, free of turf. Although it can be found on pebble and sandy river shallows. It grows along the banks of rivers, lakes, in meadows, along embankments, the slopes of ravines and landslides. Mother and stepmother are the most harmful in crops vegetable crops, since it develops very quickly and grows intensively, which leads to the complete displacement of other plants.

Mother and stepmother description

The root system is in the form of a long, creeping, branched rhizome, which goes deep into the soil by about 1 m. Two types of shoots are formed from the buds located on the rhizome: vegetative and flowering. Already in early spring, flowering shoots begin to develop; they are erect, low, up to 30 cm high. Each shoot has a head (flower), which withers after flowering. The heads are bright yellow, 2-2.5 cm in diameter. The flowers are both hollow, but sterile. When ripe, the heads become fluffy, very similar to dandelions. The flowering period begins as soon as the snow melts, in early spring.

Fetus- a slightly curved cylindrical achene with a tuft. Flowering shoots die off after flowering.

Vegetative shoots begin to develop some time after flowering begins. These shoots bear several rounded, heart-shaped, irregularly toothed leaves on long petioles that form a rosette. The upper surface of these leaves is smooth, and the lower surface is white tomentose. If you touch a leaf with your palm, you can feel that the leaf is warm below and cold on top.

The plant is very prolific. Maximum amount seeds that one plant can produce is approximately 19 thousand seeds. The seeds have high germination capacity and germinate in the soil from a depth of up to 2 cm.

Mother and stepmother harmfulness

Mother and stepmother brings harm agriculture, littering plantations with cultivated vegetables. Measures to combat this weed should be aimed at destroying young rosettes. The maximum effectiveness of this method will be achieved in the early stages of plant development. A combination of surface treatment techniques with layer-by-layer deep loosening and pruning of rhizomes shows very good results in the fight. To herbicides wide application mother and stepmother show resilience. It is necessary to use substances that penetrate the rhizome. For example, tordan, banvel.

Mother and stepmother medicinal properties

Since ancient times, mother and stepmother were considered medicinal plant. IN Ancient Greece and in Rome it was prescribed for treatment bronchial asthma and bronchitis. In Paris, the emblem of pharmacies was an image of this plant. Such emblems were hung above every shop that sold medicinal herbs.

The above-ground part of the plant is used as a medicinal raw material. Flower heads are collected during flowering, that is, in March-April. They are usually separated from the stem. It is necessary to dry in the shade, spreading it on paper in one layer. The collection of leaves begins after flowering, when they become smooth, but have not yet begun to become covered with brown spots. The best time for this is the beginning of summer. Leaves need to be dried just like flowers, in the shade and in one layer. Dried inflorescences are stored for two years, and leaves for three years.

The plant is very rich in beneficial microelements. The leaves contain zinc, which allows coltsfoot to be used as an anti-inflammatory agent in the treatment of sore throats, hoarseness, laryngitis, colds and others. infectious diseases. The herb tincture is used externally to treat skin infections, wounds, and burns. Coltsfoot has a beneficial effect on the digestive system, relieves diarrhea and is an appetite stimulant.

Also mother and stepmother indispensable assistant in maintaining and restoring the beauty of skin and hair. This plant has a high content of amino acids - cystine, sulfur and silicon dioxide. Cystine promotes hair strengthening and growth, high level silicon soothes the scalp, eliminates dandruff and dead skin cells, gives elasticity and shine to the hair. Mother and stepmother extract will help increase skin elasticity; thanks to this extract, the functioning of the sebaceous glands is regulated.

Mother and stepmother are able to normalize metabolism. Sometimes it is used for weight loss.

Application medicines based on this plant has contraindications. Do not use infusions and decoctions long time, more than 1.5 months. Do not give to children under two years of age. It is also prohibited to take mother and stepmother during pregnancy and breastfeeding women. People with liver diseases should never consume this plant in any form.

Be careful! Self-medication is dangerous to life and health. Before using medications, you should definitely visit a doctor.

Mother and stepmother photo

Common mother and stepmother (Tussilago farfara) Leaves of common coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara) Seeds of coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara)

COLTSFOOT(Latin: Tussilágo fárfara). The literal translation is “melancholy cough.” From the Latin words “tussis” - cough, “lago” - to drive away and “farfara” - “carrying flour” (there is a powdery coating on the bottom of the leaf).

The Russian name arose due to the peculiarity of the coltsfoot leaves: the underside is fluffy and soft - “mother”, and the upper side is smooth and cold - “stepmother”. People say: “A mother loves how the summer sun warms, but a stepmother doesn’t like how cold she is.” Winter sun" Symbolizes maternal care.

This plant has another rather rare feature - its flowers appear before the leaves. For this, the British call the coltsfoot “son before father.”

Popular names: mother grass, king potion, two-leafed grass, icy bastweed, March flower, tobacco grass (in some areas its leaves are “smoked” for coughing), horse’s hoof, riverside grass, rannik, podbel (due to the whitish color of the lower sides of leaves), kamchug grass (kamchug is the ancient name for gout), fire lettuce.

The last name indicates another feature of the coltsfoot. It grows well in a fireplace, where there are no competing plants, and excellent fertilizer - ash - promotes its rapid growth. If you dig up the soil in the place of the forest, especially spruce, where it grows, you can find embers - a trace of an old fire.

Coltsfoot blooms earlier than all herbaceous plants and longer than other primroses - 38 days. There are many mostly sad legends about its origin. One woman’s own daughter died. She spent all her days in the cemetery, stroking her palms and caressing the earth in which her beloved child rested. From mother's love arose a flower that felt warm side

a leaf covered the girl's grave. But this woman also had a stepdaughter, whom she did not love. And therefore the other side of the sheet was harder and colder. Another old Russian legend tells that a long time ago, one man fell in love with another and left the family. In his previous family he left a daughter with wonderful golden hair. And so the new wife became jealous of her husband’s own daughter, was angry that he was visiting her, and decided to destroy her. She lured the child to a cliff and pushed him down. The mother realized that her daughter was not at home, ran to look for her, and found her dead. She then rushed into her stepmother’s house and dragged her to the cliff. And then, in the struggle, both fell off a cliff. In this place, small yellow flowers grew to match the golden-haired girl. And the leaves on one side are like mother's love

And this legend tells about a happy family in which the mother suddenly died. The children stopped playing and singing, and the father bent over and dried up from grief. Soon, a young widow neighbor bewitched the widower and became his new wife. But life never returned to the house, because the stepmother is not a mother, her voice smells cold, and her touch is angry and prickly. As soon as the sun warmed up in the spring, the youngest daughter began to run with her melancholy to the river and shed tears for deceased mother. One day, crying, she raised her head: and near her feet a yellow flower blossomed. And on the same day, the stepmother disappeared without a trace, and ringing laughter returned to the house again. Since then, this flower began to appear every spring to check if the children were well, and then disappeared again. And in the summer, leaves appear in its place: with a cold top and a warm soft inside.

The Ukrainian legend about the mother and stepmother is interesting. That was a long time ago. The husband and wife lived in harmony and love, rejoicing in their children. One day my wife got caught in heavy rain, caught a bad cold and fell ill. She melted every day, like a wax candle. She senses that she won’t be able to get up. He asks his husband: “Oh, Vasily, I’m going to die, apparently. Don't let your kids go to waste, get married.

But don’t take the neighbor’s widow, she won’t be a mother to our children. She has enough of her own.”

Vasily buried his wife, and soon wooed the neighbor’s widow, she managed to ingratiate herself into his trust. She still established those rules. She divided the children between hers and her husband. Everything for our own, but nothing for orphans. Her children are dressed, fed, well-groomed, but her husbands are hungry, cold, in old clothes. As soon as the snow melted, the stepmother kicked out other people's children to bask in the sun on the river bank. It was cold for the kids in torn clothes, they began to ask:

Sun! Sun! Warm our heads!

The sun took pity on them and placed golden wreaths of its light on their heads, and they warmed the children with their warmth. The stepmother saw this, ran to the river and asked:

Where did you get these wreaths?

“The sun gave us,” answered Vasily’s children. The stepmother turned white with envy and ran into the house and to her children:

Take blankets and quickly run to the river bank. May the sun give you golden wreaths too!

But the sun only burned the top of the blankets and went behind the cloud. An icy wind blew with frost and froze the stepmother's children. And on the banks of the river yellow flowers and green leaves appeared - the mother’s children and the stepmother’s children, and only blankets remained from the stepmother herself. (

The legend associated with the appearance of coltsfoot flowers. ex-wife. She lured her to a cliff and pushed her off it. Meanwhile, the mother, having discovered that the girl was missing, rushed to look for her, but was too late: the girl was no longer breathing. The mother rushed at the stepmother and, grappling, they flew to the bottom of the ravine. And the next day a plant covered the slopes, the leaves of which were soft on one side and hard on the other, and small ones rose above them. yellow flowers, reminiscent of the girl's blond hair.

Coltsfoot is an amazing flower, everyone has heard about it, but not everyone is lucky enough to see it in all stages of growth. These are biological features of this plant. You cannot admire all the organs of this herb at once: you look at the flower when there are no leaves yet, they appear and develop until late autumn, and the achenes are carried by the wind after ripening.
Lovers and connoisseurs of nature will be pleased to know that the coltsfoot is the first to decorate the thawed earth, bringing round dances of golden heads to the first spring lawns. This modest, surprisingly resilient plant is one of the first heralds of awakening spring and renewed nature.
Where yesterday there was snow and only thawed patches were visible, today it has already melted, the hills, cliffs and slopes swollen with moisture have warmed up railways. Elastic, succulent pedicels with brown scales and woolly pubescence appear from the ground. You won’t immediately notice them among last year’s withered grass, until the yellow-golden heads of inflorescences open at the tops of the stems.
Coltsfoot blooms in April – May. In terms of flowering duration (38 days), it has no equal among spring primroses. Inflorescences are single bright yellow baskets. On warm fine days, in the morning, when the sun warms up, the flower baskets stretch out on their stalks, straighten, turning towards the sun, and bask in its rays until 17 o'clock. Smart flowers close and droop along with their stems, as if they are falling asleep. So the plant solves three problems:
protects itself from possible night frosts;
keeps pollen from getting wet;
When the flower opens, pollen lands on the stigma, cross-pollination occurs, and the plant is protected.
During this period, there are still few insects in nature, and an ingenious device guarantees pollination, after which the inflorescence falls asleep forever and wakes up as a fluffy dandelion.

Coltsfoot flowers are good weather forecasters, as they determine the onset of cold and rainy weather in advance with an accuracy no worse than a barometer.

Flowering stems up to 25 cm high are erect, unbranched, pubescent, covered with oblong, mauve, brownish-red sharp scale-like leaves on top. By mid-summer, the leaves will harden and form continuous dense carpets along the bottom of ravines and clay slopes and sandy spits of rivers. They last until late autumn, but are severely battered by the winds and therefore become thinner, with rusty spots. They fulfilled their purpose and accumulated reserves in perennial rhizomes. nutrients.
Due to the fact that the leaves develop after the plant has flowered, they are simply not noticed or examined. The eye is attracted by the flowers of other plants that had appeared by that time.
Coltsfoot bears fruit in May - June. The achenes are collected in a beautiful ball, like a dandelion, but several times larger. Someone is lucky enough to see such fluffy balls in calm weather, and he wonders why he has never seen such huge dandelions before.
Not only people, but also honey bees. This firstborn of the spring flora, one of the earliest honey plants, has great importance, since with the supply of nectar and pollen the strength of bee colonies noticeably increases.
Coltsfoot flowers reproduce well both by seeds and vegetatively. In the fields, this is a difficult weed to eradicate, since a lot of achenes are formed, and it takes only a few hours for the seed to germinate after it enters the soil.
In addition, coltsfoot, as a perennial, reproduces well vegetatively. This explains such a wide distribution area of ​​coltsfoot. It grows in Europe, Asia, North Africa, and North America, where it was brought by Europeans. In Russia, it can be found throughout the European part, in Siberia, the Ussuri region, and the Caucasus.
Coltsfoot loves moist soil, chooses elevated places, grows on clay soils along the banks of rivers, streams, along ravines, along roadsides, slopes, fields, the first one populates bare empty spaces.
The coltsfoot plant has the old Russian folk name kamchuga grass, which took root due to the use of its leaves and inflorescences in traditional medicine for the treatment of “kamchuga” - the ancient name for gout.
Throughout its long history, there are countless popular names for camouflage grass. The name “coltsfoot” is truly Russian. It is given due to the fact that the lower surface of the leaf is covered with numerous fine hairs and causes a feeling of warmth when touched. This side warms, like a kind and affectionate mother, and on top the leaves are smooth, green and cold, like a stepmother.

Less known popular names: butterbur, two-leaf, cold burdock, mother grass, one-sided grass, tumor leaves. And one more thing: grass near the river, water burdock, rannik, pobel, white fluff, horse's hoof, king potion, forest burdock, mother grass - this is an incomplete list of them.
Camchus grass is one of the oldest and most important medicinal products, which were known back in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. ethnoscience Many countries use the leaves and flowers of cassava grass to treat various diseases.

Our planet is home to a huge number of the most different plants, and understanding this diversity is very difficult. But some of these plants can bring special benefits to humans: prevent the development of certain diseases and even cure them. Just such a famous flower is the coltsfoot, which is found in almost all corners of our country. This perennial crop has long been used by humans for medicinal purposes. Let's talk on- /site/ about such a plant as coltsfoot, we will give a description for children, tell legends about such a culture and remember together why it was called that.

About what mother and stepmother look like, description of the plant

Coltsfoot is actually quite easy to recognize. This plant is one of the first to please us with attractive and bright flowers. Often, even during frosts, in thawed patches, the coltsfoot already shows its golden branches, wrapped in warm hairs. After the sun warms up, the plant gradually blooms flowers. They scatter near roads, along the banks of rivers and streams, as well as on cliffs and meadows. If frosts and cold weather are expected, the flowers immediately hide inside a fluffy collar, which can protect the most delicate petals from the cold. Thanks to this property, people use coltsfoot to predict the weather.

It is surprising that the flowers of such a plant appear long before the leaves. Only after the petals fly away like parachutes with the wind does the coltsfoot become covered with leaves. Thanks to this feature, this plant received its English name, which literally translates as “son before father.”

The main feature of coltsfoot is the unique structure of its leaves. Their Bottom part covered with very delicate hairs, and the surface of the leaf is harder and colder to the touch.

But what does this have to do with why the mother and stepmother, why the plant was called that?

Why is mother and stepmother called that?

It is thanks to the structure of its leaves that coltsfoot got its name. After all, delicate hairs are like a mother’s touch, and a hard surface is comparable to a stepmother’s hands. The plant is also popularly called one-sided and two-leafed. Thanks to medicinal properties Coltsfoot also goes by the name “king of herbs” or “king of potions.”

Legends associated with coltsfoot

There are several legends about coltsfoot in folklore. The first of them tells about an evil woman who really wanted to get rid of her husband’s daughter from her first marriage. She didn’t want her husband to date the girl and his ex-wife. The stepmother lured the girl to a large cliff and pushed her down. The mother discovered her daughter was missing and rushed to search for her. But she didn’t have time, and came running when the girl had already died. In grief and rage, the woman grabbed her stepmother, they fell from the cliff into the ravine together and were broken. And the next day the bottom of the ravine was covered with an amazing plant with leaves that were soft on one side and hard on the other. Above the plant rose beautiful small flowers of a pleasant yellow color, which resembled the color of a little girl’s hair.

Another legend about the mother and stepmother plant speaks of a happy family in which the mother suddenly died. The children stopped playing and singing, and the father slumped over. Soon the young widow neighbor entered into the widower’s trust and became his new wife. But life never returned to the house, because the stepmother is not a mother, her voice smells cold, and her touch is angry and prickly. As soon as the sun warmed up in the spring, the youngest daughter began to run with her melancholy to the river and shed tears for her dead mother. One day, crying, she raised her head: and near her feet a yellow flower blossomed. And on the same day, the stepmother disappeared without a trace, and ringing laughter returned to the house again. And the flower began to appear every spring to check if the children were doing well, and then disappeared again. And in the summer, leaves appear in its place: with a cold top and a warm, soft inner side.

Additional Information

Coltsfoot is one of the first honey plants. The honey it produces is very tasty, aromatic and sugary. It can provide enormous health benefits.

And coltsfoot leaves have long been used by our ancestors to treat a variety of diseases. Most often they are used to combat coughs, as well as to eliminate heart ailments, shortness of breath, kidney diseases and many inflammatory processes.

Coltsfoot is an amazing plant that is found in many parts of our country and can bring great benefits to humans.