Perennial herbaceous plant up to 1 m high. Taproots, branching. Stems erect, tall, branching at the top. The leaves are alternate, oblong in outline, scattered hairy, pinnately dissected, dark green above, grayish green below. The flowers are yellow, small, tubular in baskets collected in a corymbose inflorescence. The receptacle is bare, the fruit is an achene without a tuft. Blooms in June-August.
Tansy, or wild mountain ash, is a widespread plant throughout the world. It occurs in bushes, ditches, along roads, in fields, wastelands, near dwellings.
Medicinal raw materials are flowers (flower baskets), collected at the beginning of flowering without pedicels, in folk medicine – sometimes fruits. Tansy contains the bitter substance tanacetin and essential oil, which contains levorotary camphor, berneol and ketone thujone.
Studies have shown that an infusion of tansy inflorescences increases blood pressure, increases the amplitude of heart contractions, slows down the heart rate, increases bile secretion, enhances the secretion of the gastrointestinal tract, while toning its muscles. It has been successfully used in enterocolitis.
In medical practice, infusion of tansy inflorescences is used as an antihelminthic (for ascariasis and pinworms), liver diseases (hepatitis and angiochilitis), enterocolitis, gastritis with reduced secretion of gastric juice and delayed evacuation.
According to some authors, a 5% infusion of tansy baskets (75-100 ml 2-3 times every day) promotes scarring of gastric and duodenal ulcers.
In folk medicine, the flowers are either brewed as tea, preventing steam from escaping, and given to drink from worms, or eaten as a powder with honey or sugar; they drink a decoction of water for pulmonary tuberculosis, headache, nervous disorders, jaundice, disorders of the functional activity of the gastrointestinal tract, liver diseases, diarrhea, dysentery, as an antipyretic, diaphoretic, for migraines, aching joints; with heavy menstruation and hemorrhoids – to stop bleeding.
The flowers and fruits of the plant are used as a sedative for aches (for rheumatism, headache, hypochondria, epilepsy).
Preparations from this plant are often used as an anti-febrile and laxative, also for the expulsion of pinworms.
Since tansy is poisonous (during research it was noted, for example, that its flowers and leaves paralyze 100% of flies for 15 minutes), it is popularly known as a remedy that repels insects (flies, fleas) and replaces naphthalene in the fight against moths and bedbugs. Butchers sprinkle fresh meat with a powder of grass and flowers to protect it from flies.
Application
A decoction of flowers: 5 g per 200 ml – drink warm in 3 divided doses (for enterocolitis).
Tincture: 25%; 30-40 drops 3 times every day (for diseases of the stomach).
Infusion: 20 g per 200 ml; 1 st. spoon 3 times every day (with ascariasis and pinworms).
Enema (with the expulsion of pinworms): 1 tbsp. a spoonful of fruit powder is mixed with 2 medium cloves of garlic and boiled for 10 minutes in 2 cups of milk in a closed vessel over low heat. Strained and still warm contents of the enema should be tried to keep inside longer. This procedure can be repeated.
Powdered tansy flowers are taken with honey for 1-3 g.
Infusion: 5 g per 200 ml – is given in 3 doses in a heated form for enterocolitis.