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betony

Значение термина betony в knolik

betony - BETONY (Betonica officinalis)
betony - "Sell your coat and buy Betony," ran the old proverb. "Autres temps, autres mæurs," say the French, and they might well point the moral now with Betony. Once upon a time to possess this herb was to possess one of the great goods of life or, if it were lacking, it were worth purchasing even with a man's last resources. To be without it was to court disaster, and well it might be since, on the showing of Antonius Musa, the valued physician of the great Roman emperor, Augustus Caesar, it was a certain cure for no fewer than forty-seven diseases. From the bites of mad dogs to indigestion, from the stings of serpents to the toothache, from a splinter in the thumb to the plague, there was nothing it could not set right - even witchcraft vanished before it! The recital of its virtues makes even the most vaunted nostrum of a modern-day quack seem poor and ineffectual. Through the whole of a long volume its praises were set forth by the learned doctor, "and it was not the practice of Octavius Caesar to keep fools about him," remarks Culpepper. This same old herbalist further endorses the eulogy in the words, "it is a very precious herb for certain, and most fitting to be kept in a man's house."

It was extraordinary how belief in its virtues was ingrained. Turner, a physician at the end of the seventeenth century, recounts nearly thirty complaints that Betony will cure, and adds, "I shall conclude with the words I have found in an old manuscript under the virtues of it. 'More than all this have been proved of Betony.'" Because of this reputed excellence there once passed current the saying, "You have more virtues than Betony" when a particularly delicate compliment was intended, or, "May you have more virtues than Betony," when a warm benediction was given. Most ridiculous superstitions grew up about it; one of very ancient date was that serpents would fight and kill each other if placed within a ring composed of it; and others declared that even the wild beasts recognised its efficacy, and used it if wounded!

But let us leave tradition and turn direct to the actual plant itself. Now, it is one of the ironies of plant life that to-day not nineteen people out of twenty who pass along the country lanes or traverse the woodlands recognise the Betony when they see it, though it is common enough. Its personality is lost amid the host of rather uninteresting, purplish or reddish weeds - the hedge stachys, the red dead nettle, the galeopsis, the calamints and others - which play such a large, if somewhat obscure, part in roadside vegetation. Even among so dull a group it does not stand out as particularly remarkable, nor has it any specially distinguishing features. It comes up year after year from a woody root the thickness of one's little finger. Its square stem, a foot or two high, is furrowed, each portion that lies between the pairs of leaves, having two sides more deeply hollowed than the other two. These deeper grooves are the gutters of the plant leading down to its reservoir, namely, the soil immediately round the root, and they run from the points between the leaves of one pair to the midrib of each of the leaves in the pair immediately below it. The surfaces of the leaves collect moisture and tilt so as to send it down the next groove, and so on, and thus the greater part of the rain falling on a plant is gathered up into two streams which increase in volume as the base of the plant is reached. It is interesting to find that though the ungrooved part of the stem is not "wetted" by water, these gutters can be so wetted, and hence the passage of water is facilitated down them. The reason of this difference is that on the ungrooved parts of the stem there is a clothing of somewhat fine, rigid hairs all pointing downwards and pressed on to the stem, and these, like a mackintosh, turn off the rain.

The leaves next the root are on long stalks, and are of a drawn-out heart shape. Up the stem towards the flowers are a few pairs of leaves stretching out like wings, two pairs between them pointing to all quarters of the compass, for they arise on alternate sides of the stem. Hence it follows that the gutters which always start between each pair are not continuous down the whole stem, but the streams of water are successively collected and turned from side to side. The lower pairs of these stem leaves are possessed of short stalks, but the upper pairs are set completely down upon the stem. All the leaves feel rough to the touch, and are fringed with the tiniest edging of hairs; their whole surface is marked with dots - storehouses of a bitter and aromatic oil.

Not so long ago some ingenious herbalist be-thought him of Betony leaves for the making of snuff. He dried and powdered them and sold the powder as a cure for nervous headaches. The use of this snuff produced violent sneezing - probably the hairs which had covered the leaves were responsible for this. Anyway, Betony snuff had a considerable reputation for a while. Betony tea, too, is a cottage remedy; drunk early in the morning it is supposed to cure headache. The mere smell of it - like the sight of the dentist's door - is sufficient to chase away all pain in certain neurotic folk.

At the top of the stem are the purple-red, two-lipped flowers arranged in dense rings which together form short spikes. Then there is a break and a piece of bare stem with two or four leaves, and then more flowers. They are distinctly more showy and brighter than the spikes of the purple dead nettle.

Our picture clearly depicts the form of the flower. Its cup or calyx is crowned by five sharp points, each representing a sepal. The corolla is a long tube, which ends in the usual two lips - the family trait - but which does not enlarge at the throat as that of some of its relatives does. Probably the length of the tube is not too great for an ordinary bee to drink the honey easily from the lip, so there is no need for enlargement to allow the insect to press farther in. The lower lip forms the usual three-lobed platform for its accommodation. It is a flower with two stages in its life. When it first opens its lips to the world its four stamens - they lie in two pairs snugly protected under the arching upper lip - are quite prepared to act, and directly a bee comes in their vicinity they give her a good dusting of pollen. But low down in the tube the receiving column of the immature seeds is playing a waiting game and keeping quite in the background; not until those pollen boxes above have got rid of their pollen does it wish to be in the running. The second stage conies directly this is done and visitors have carried the pollen dust away, for then it begins to grow and push well forward into the very mouth of the flower. Now it is its turn to welcome visitors, and the flower's turn to receive benefit. The next bee visitor, if happily this is not the first flower on her calling list, will rub pollen dust on its knob; the infinitesimal magic tube from each grain of dust will quickly traverse the column and touch the ovules one by one. Once the passage is accomplished the column fades, the purple-red petals will fall off, but the calyx will remain faithful. And down in its centre there will develop four brown, smooth, three-cornered nutlets to give hostages to the future. The cycle of life is complete.

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