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Sea buckthorn - ingredients, healing properties and tips for your own cultivation
The sea buckthorn bears many names: Dune and Haffdorn refer to the fact that it also grows on sea dunes and defies the salt content, sandberry emphasizes that this thorn plant produces delicious berries, other names are willow thorn or red sloe. It is an olive willow plant. Sea buckthorn offers fruits with a high content of vitamin C, which taste sour and make it attractive as food.
contents
- A deciduous shrub
- The blossoms
- The fruits
- Spread of sea buckthorn
- Occurrence
- A vitamin bomb
- Sea buckthorn as a medicinal plant
- Sea buckthorn as food
- Sea-buckthorn in the garden?
- root barrier
- A crop
- The cut
- Harvest of sea buckthorn fruits
- health
A deciduous shrub
Sea buckthorn is a deciduous shrub that can grow up to six meters high. Its branches form thorny shoots, close-fitting scales make them shimmer in the color of bronze. The shrub forms an extensive root system that extends especially in width - in depth it reaches 3 meters, in width up to 12 meters. This growth in width is an adaptation to the sandy soil on which sea buckthorn grows, for example, at the seashore. There, even in shallow ground, the root system ensures firm hold of the plant. It is therefore excellent for preventing erosion.
The summer-green sea buckthorn shrub can grow up to six meters in height. (Image: jonnysek / fotolia.com) The leaves are alternate with a short stem. The leaf blades are lanceolate, the tip of the blade is pointed to dull, the leaf margin rolls upwards. The top of the leaves cover star-shaped hair, these fall out later and remains a pale green color. On the underside, white hair grows into a felt.
The blossoms
Sea buckthorn blooms before the foliage drives out. The flowers are yellow, small and unisexual. They sprout in March, and the shrub blooms from March to May. The pollen collects in the sepals, and the wind spreads them after they dry.
The fruits
From August to December, the shrub bears fruit. These have an oval shape and are orange yellow to orange red. They grow around the branches of the female plants and develop from the calyx tubes that surround the seeds.
The flesh is greasy and full of essential oils. It encloses the seed; this is hard and brown in color, inside is a white core. The seeds germinate in light and cold.
Spread of sea buckthorn
The oilweed plant is pollinated by the wind. The seeds spread through digestion - many birds and small mammals eat the fruit, on the other by water. The fruits are known as food of the pheasant, which brought the bush the name pheasant berry. Root shoots spread the plant locally.
On the Baltic Sea, there are many places where sea buckthorn grows in the wild. (Image: JanButzlaff / fotolia.com) Occurrence
Sea buckthorn grows in Central Europe to the Pyrenees, from the Alps to the Caucasus and in the north to Norway. Its main distribution, however, is in Asia, in Siberia and China. Although the Haffdorn was introduced as a crop throughout Europe, but Pleistocene pollen finds show that it is a naturally occurring species. Wild stands in Germany are in southern and central Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg. In the northwest of Lower Saxony, in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and in the east of Schleswig-Holstein, it grows in larger stocks, on the Baltic Sea and North Sea coast, there are sprinkled occurrences.
All these regions, where it occurs naturally, are characterized by calcareous sand or gravel soils. Sea buckthorn is a typical plant of heathland and glades in dry pine forests. It grows on gravel banks of rivers as well as on dunes and in steppes. Here he is considered a pioneer plant and grows together with the barberry.
A vitamin bomb
Sea buckthorn berries contain much more vitamin C than citrus fruits, but less than rose hips - up to 900 mg per 100 g. There are also beta-carotene and tannins. For vegans, the plant is interesting because the berries contain vitamin B12. Usually, vitamin B12 is present in animals, while in sea buckthorn it forms through a symbiosis with bacteria on the outer shell of the fruit.
The pulp contains up to 5% oil, and this is rich in unsaturated fatty acids, carotene and various vitamins.
Sea buckthorn as a medicinal plant
Sea buckthorn is used for various ailments: against loss of appetite, intestinal inflammation and diarrhea, preventing colds (vitamin C), vitamin C deficiency, skin rash, mild burns and acne.
From the sea buckthorn berries you can make delicious jam. (Image: zia_shusha / fotolia.com) The fruits can be processed to juice, fruits and seeds to boil tea, sea buckthorn is a base for jams and jellies. The oil is found in skin creams again. It is also used as a helpful home remedy for sunburn.
The plant is cultivated especially in China. However, since the fruits are picked by hand between the thorns and the first harvest is only possible after six years, the price is high.
Sea buckthorn as food
Sea buckthorn juice is thick. He is rarely drunk straight, but gives mixed drinks a typical note. Sea buckthorn liqueur, the so-called pheasant spray, is primarily a local product in sea buckthorn areas.
Since the berries are just as laborious to win as rosehips, they are mainly dried as an ingredient in teas. The classic fruit teas with sea buckthorn and rosehips are joined today by new varieties - the healthy wild fruit, for example, harmonizes with South African rooibos tea.
Sea-buckthorn in the garden?
The plant is ideal for large hedges, the thorns provide protection against unwanted guests, the bright berries and bronze-colored branches have a high ornamental value especially in winter, and the berries are also an important food source for various species of birds.
The deciduous shrub is a very good choice for a game reserve in wildlife parks and zoological gardens, in the open countryside or as a revival of the cleared agricultural desert.
Allotment gardeners were warned however. Sea buckthorn stands out as a bird's nest and nest grove, but on a limited area it displaces other plants with its sprouting roots. It is very difficult to contain him. If you still want to plant it in the garden, plan root barriers right from the start.
root barrier
For a rhizome barrier, for example, you use polyethylene as a piece of meter, bring it as a ring around the sea buckthorn into the ground and close it with a special rail. The material should be at least 2 mm thick. The root barrier should be at least 1.5 m in diameter and at least 60 cm high.
The willow plant is ideal for fixing sandy soil, so it can be used well for dike and dune protection on the seashore and on river banks.
A crop
In the 1960s, sea buckthorn was cultivated in the GDR. The aim was to supply the people in East Germany self-sufficient with vitamins, and on the sandy soils in Mecklenburg and Brandenburg, the plant thrived anyway.
Buckthorn fruits contain a lot of vitamin C. (Image: Tim UR / fotolia.com) Today, the main growing areas in Germany are in Brandenburg (300 ha), Mecklenburg (200 ha), Ludwigslust (120 ha) and Saxony-Anhalt (100 ha). Overall, the plant is grown in Germany so only on a very small area.
The cut
If you plant sea buckthorn in the garden, pay attention to the following. The crown grows in width, and soon fruits form only on the outside, while the inside of the crown lumbers. You can prevent this by severely cutting back the shoots each January.
In order to produce a good yield, you should plant at least two female and one male shrub. Cut the female specimens alternately each year, then harvest annually.
Harvest of sea buckthorn fruits
You can harvest from August. Sign of the maturity is the orange color of the fruits. Be sure to wear gloves. Injuries caused by the long thorns are painful and difficult to avoid without protection.
Either you pick the fruits or you shake them off. To shake off the fruits have already matured for several weeks. You put a blanket under the bush, then grab the branches and shake.
health
You do not have to worry about the health of the sea buckthorn. With suitable soil the shrub grows without problems. The plant is hardly susceptible to diseases and pests. (Dr. Utz Anhalt)