Common names: goat berries, oatmeal plum, sour plum, black thorn.

Used parts: flowers, fruit and leaves.

Chemist name: flowers thorns - Pruni spinosae flos (formerly: Flores Pruni spinosae), fruit blackthorn - Pruni spinosae fructus (formerly: Fructus Pruni spinosae), Least Tern - Pruni spinosae folium (formerly: Folia Pruni spinosae).

Botanical description. chaparral, reaching 1-3 m in height. branches at a young age velvety-pubescent, ending with sharp thorns, for which the plant got its name. Elliptic petioled leaves on the edge serrate. Even before the opening of leaves revealed small white flowers, which are located on the branches as thick, making the entire bush in white. Fruit - spherical, up to 1 cm in diameter, in the mature state of dark gray. Flowers in March - April. It occurs in forest edges, sunny slopes of mountains, on roadsides, in wastelands and pastures. It likes rich soil with lime.

Collecting and harvesting. The flowers are harvested in March - April, after of opening. dried them in a shady spot. Collection of leaves should be carried out immediately after flowering bush, while they're young. The fruits are collected in late autumn, after the first frost, and use fresh or dried with hot air.

The active substances. The flowers contain little amygdalin (glycoside hydrocyanic acid), derivatives of coumarin and flavonglikozidy; leaves - tannins and bitterness and the fruit - tannins, amygdalin, acids and vitamin C.

Curative effect and application. The flowers and leaves, but above all the flowers are used as a mild laxative, useful and easy to diuretic effect. Sebastian routes KNEIPP with great praise of flowers thorns. Made from fruit juice or jam, used to excite the appetite.

• Tea from flowers or leaves of blackthorn (also from their mixture): 2 teaspoons of raw horse pour 1 / 4 liters of water and slowly boil and filter. Dosage: 2 cups of tea (unsweetened) a day.
• Gem of thorns: sloe fruit is washed, pour fresh cold water and leave overnight. Then water is poured off, and the fruit wine is poured with water (for 1 kg of fruit 1 / 4 l white wine and Vg liter of water) and boil with constant stirring, until soft. After cooling the entire mass of rice and stir puree. Then 1 kg of puree add 1 / 4 liter wine and 375 g of sugar and all cook a little longer until the desired consistency.Instead of wine can take 3% vinegar. Some people can not do anything there in the mornings, because they have not allocated gastric juice. They should eat 1-2 tablespoons of jam, pure, or on a piece of bread, it quickly stimulates appetite, and not have to leave home with an empty stomach, as is often the case. Take this advice with caution, because the breakfast is very important for humans.

Appetite can be excited and the tablespoon of thorns juice in the morning on an empty stomach.

• Thorns juice: washed fruit pour boiling water so that they were completely covered by it. After 1-2 days pour off the dark red juice, add to 1 liter of juice 500 g sugar and cook with stirring, constantly removing the foam. Juice can then be poured into bottles and sterilized.

Use in traditional medicine. The list of diseases against which traditional medicine is the use of flowers, leaves and fruits of thorns, very large. Tea from the flowers and leaves is given as a laxative, to cleanse the blood, gastric diseases, cough, prolonged menstruation, edema, urinary retention, urolithiasis, and in all cases of skin rashes in children. Made from ripe fruit jam is used in diseases of the stomach, intestines and bladder, juice - bleeding from the nose, to gargle the throat and mouth, inflammation of the gums and palate.