Cultural herbs: names. Medicinal Herbs and Herbs

Since ancient times man has been using wild and cultivated herbs in the everyday life , whose names are known to everyone - dandelion, burdock, nettle, celandine, clover, ledum, sage, adonis and several hundred thousand species. They are grown for consumption in food, preparation of medicines, for livestock feed, for use in industry.

What is grass?

In the world there are such groups of plants:

• Trees - they have one high trunk, covered with bark, numerous branches branch from the trunk.
• Shrubs - instead of the main trunk they form several thin lignified stems.
• Herbs - do not have a trunk, but have soft stems, which die every year. They are annual, biennial and perennial.

Wild and cultivated herbs

Plants that grow without human help are called wild-growing. They are distributed where there are suitable natural and climatic conditions for them. Herbaceous plants that a person planted or sowed, followed by groomed (watered, treated, fertilized) are cultural herbs. Examples of cultivation are known since ancient times. In the course of breeding, scientists significantly improved the quality of cultural herbs, increasing their frost and drought resistance, yield, resistance to diseases.

The same plant can be both wild and cultured. For example, if a grass clover grows on natural meadows, it is wild. If a person sows clover on pastures and takes care of him, he becomes a cultural plant.

Cucumber is a herb?

The farm uses herbs very widely. Their names are diverse - lettuce, sorrel, timothy grass, melissa, caraway seeds, dill, parsley, mustard, horseradish, motherwort, ginseng and others. These are all well-known examples. But do you know that potatoes, cucumber and tomato are, in fact, also cultivated herbs? Their names are familiar to us, but we perceive them as vegetables. In fact, vegetables are called in the everyday life fruits of these plants, while their life form in botany is called grass. By analogy, banana, pineapple and Jerusalem artichoke are also herbaceous plants, here you can include wheat, rye, peas, beans and other crops that do not have a tree trunk or lignified stems.

Classification

Scientifically, herbs are divided into:

• Annual - they completely die off after the growing season and fruiting (for example, dill, peas). They can only be renewed with the help of seeds.
• Biennial plants are plants whose full life cycle lasts up to 24 months and includes 2 growing seasons. This, for example, cabbage, carrots, daisies.
• Perennials are plants whose life cycle is more than two years. St. John's wort, burdock, banana are classic examples of perennial grasses.

Other classification options

By industry:

• Grasses (field cropping);
• Herbaceous plants, whose fruits are vegetables (vegetable growing);
• Flowers (floriculture).

For economic purposes:

• Food herbs - dill, parsley, cumin, mustard, eggplant and hundreds more.
• Feed plants - alfalfa, sainfoin, timothy grass , etc.
• Spinning grasses - flax, hemp, etc.
• Medonosy - buckwheat, sweet clover, snakehead, etc.
• Medicinal cultivated plants are herbs used in phytotherapy. These are chamomile, motherwort, valerian, ginseng, mint, ayr, St. John's wort, string, plantain, oregano. They are sown in the fields to collect useful raw materials: leaves, flowers, rhizomes.
• Dyeing plants are calendula, which also applies to medicinal plants.
• Technical herbs - rape.

A rare type of classification

Cultivated plants (grasses as well) are sometimes classified according to their chemical composition, taking into account the prevalence of a substance:

• Protein-containing,
• Starch,
• Sugar-containing,
• Oilseeds,
• Ethereal,
• Spicy,
• Alkaloid,
• Fibrous.

Name variants

Each plant has several names. In the people, the names of herbs (variants can differ greatly among themselves) aptly designate their special properties. In the scientific world, such plants are called Latin words.

Cultivated herbs of Russia

The names of herbaceous plants that grow on the vast expanses of our country are extremely numerous. Cultures are grown in agricultural fields, fertile land which allows you to collect rich harvests. The owners plant and plant a lot of herbs on their household plots.

The most widespread cultural herbaceous plant in Russia is wheat. Of the other cereals that are ubiquitously grown in the country, you can call rye, oats, barley, corn, soy and millet.

Popular legumes - peas, beans, lentils.

Potato is the only kind of starchy herbaceous plants that is successfully grown in Russia. We also cultivate a single sugar-bearing culture - sugar beet.

Of the oil-bearing species, sunflower, rape, flax, mustard are widely distributed.

In the fields and in any vegetable garden grow vegetable plants - cucumbers, zucchini, squash, eggplants, tomatoes, dill, radishes, beets, onions, carrots and cabbage. All of the above is also a cultural herb of Russia. Their names are included in the botanical directory as herbaceous plants. Although this sounds unusual, you must agree!

Medicinal Herbs

The names of medicinal plants that are cultivated in Russia are extremely numerous. A total of several million hectares in the country are allocated for sowing medicinal herbs. Most often sow mint, chamomile, valerian, plantain, burdock, nettle, celandine. Less commonly, lavender, St. John's wort, celery, ginger, motherwort, sage, wormwood, marjoram, basil are grown.

Recently, acreage under medicinal herbs has been shrinking at a rapid pace. The main reason is economic inexpediency. Herbaceous plants are demanding in care, the processing of crops is mainly carried out manually, the prices for raw materials are low. In addition, many medicinal herbs in the following years clog the crops of other crops as weeds, again and again grow in rows.

Considering the high value of such plants in the Soviet era, they were necessarily included in the crop rotation. However, today the farmer sows wheat and sunflower - those crops that provide the maximum profit. And who wants to sow the sage? Perhaps this is a rhetorical question.