Wintergreen
Wintergreen belongs to the Wintergreen family, and its Latin name is Orthilia secunda (L.).
The family name of Wintergreen is Pyrolaceae Dumort.
Description of Wintergreen
Wintergreen is a perennial herbaceous plant with creeping stems. Its leaves range from oblong-ovate to broadly ovate, with a wedge-shaped base and a short, pointed tip. These leaves are serrated and borne on rather thin petioles. The flower stalk of Wintergreen bears several scale-like leaves. The flowers are quite small, green in color, and borne in a drooping, one-sided raceme. The corolla of this plant is almost bell-shaped, can be white or greenish, and is three and a half to five millimeters long, with a width of approximately one and a half to two and a half millimeters. The fruit of the wintergreen is a nearly spherical capsule, four to six millimeters long.
This plant blooms in the first half of summer. In the wild, wintergreen is found in Ukraine, Belarus, the European Arctic, Western and Eastern Siberia, and the European part of Russia, with the exception of the Black Sea, Lower Don, and Lower Volga regions. This plant prefers dry, mixed, deciduous and coniferous forests.
Description of the Medicinal Properties of Wintergreen
Wintergreen has very valuable medicinal properties, and its herb is recommended for medicinal purposes. The term “herb” includes stems, flowers, and leaves.
The presence of such valuable medicinal properties can be attributed to the presence of bitter substances, resins, saponins, coumarins, flavonoids, quinones, phenols and their derivatives, vitamin C, tartaric acid, and citric acid in this plant.
As for traditional medicine, here this plant is quite widespread. Ortilia unilateral is used in the treatment of gynecological diseases of an inflammatory nature, bleeding, infertility, infantility, menstrual irregularities, toxicosis in pregnant women, cervical erosion, as well as fibroids, which will be accompanied by heavy bleeding. Infusions, tinctures and decoctions based on this plant are used as a diuretic for various kidney diseases and cystitis. A decoction prepared from the leaves of Ortilia unilateral is used as a wound-healing, astringent and hemostatic agent, and is also used after childbirth, for the treatment of purulent wounds, for hemorrhoids and hemoptysis. An infusion based on the leaves of this plant should be drunk for diarrhea.
For all of the above diseases, it is recommended to use the following remedy: to prepare such a healing remedy, take two tablespoons of crushed ortilia unilateral herb per two glasses of boiling water. The resulting mixture should be infused for about two hours, after which this mixture is filtered very carefully. Take the resulting medicinal product based on this plant three to four times a day, half a glass or one third of it. Provided that all the rules for the preparation of such a healing remedy are observed, as well as strict adherence to all the rules for its administration, a fairly quick positive result will be achieved.
