Helichrysum arenarium – Sandy everlasting
Asteraceae – Aster family
The part used in medicine is the sandy everlasting inflorescence – Helichrysi inflorescentia, harvested at the start of blooming and dried in drying rooms in max. 35° C. It has a sweet, slightly spicy and bitter, astringent smell.
Sandy everlasting – appearance and origin:
It is found in Eastern and Central Europe and in Asia; in Poland common in the lowlands in dry forests, bushes, roadsides, wastelands, especially on sandy soil. Partially protected. It grows up to 10-30 (50) cm, ashen grey, woolly and felty (the entire plant is covered with silver hairs). It has an underground rhizome. Short stems have no flower heads, long stems do. The flowers form spherical, orange-yellow-golden flower heads which in turn form corymb-shaped panicles. The involucre is scarious. The peripheral flowers are female, inner; the tubular flowers, growing in one row, are androgynous. The fruit are pentagonal achenes, 1 mm in length, with pappus.
The flower heads are harvested, from July to October before they fully develop, and cut together with the 2 cm-pedicels.
Sandy everlasting – effects and use:
Sandy everlasting contains around 0.8% flavonoid compounds, such as glycosides of naringenin, apigenin and kaempferol, isosalipurposide, yellow colorants (arenol and homoarenol), carotenoids, phthalides, oil and traces of scopoletin.
Sandy everlasting effects:
– Choleretic, cholagogic and spasmolytic;
sandy everlasting decoctions are helpful for liver diseases, especially the ones caused by insufficient bile secretion, in inflammations and spasms of the bile duct. Sandy everlasting also used to be used for hypochlorhydria and digestive disorders.
– Laxative;
– Diuretic;
in folk medicine it was used for rheumatism and gout.
PL