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Sloe - effect, application and planting
- Blackthorn fruits, flowers and bark contain vitamins, minerals, tannins and fruit acids.
- Blackthorn helps against fever, inflammation, loss of appetite, cramping and bleeding.
- Externally applied the plant acts against rash, boils and makes the skin appear younger.
- The fruits have to be heated, raw they are very sour.
- Blackthorn is a native pioneer plant and hardly needs care.
- The pointed thorns provide an effective living wall.
contents
- ingredients
- effect
- applications
- Wild plums
- other names
- Healing tea and healing jam
- Sloe for the skin
- Sloe for the teeth
- Sloe - biology
- The blackthorn in the culture
- Mythology of the Blackthorn
- Grow sloe
- Out of fashion?
- The best choice for difficult gardens
- Sloe in community
ingredients
Blackthorn contains valuable substances that make it an important medicinal plant. These include minerals such as iron, potassium, sodium, magnesium and calcium, but also anthocyanins, tannins, fruit acids, flavone glycosides, pectin, rutin, sugar and vitamin C..
Blackthorn is not only a thorny scrub, but the fruits, flowers and bark contain vitamins, minerals, tannins and fruit acids. (Image: upixa / fotolia.com) effect
Blackthorn drives the urine, contracts, quenches the blood, inhibits inflammation, relieves spasms and stimulates digestion. It warms and stimulates the appetite.
applications
The plant can be used for fever, colds, stones, spring fatigue, gingivitis, inflammation of the gastric mucosa, stomach cramps and constipation.
Wild plums
Blackthorn fruits look like mini plums. In fact, it is the wild form of plum and mirabelle. The small fruits are roundish and have a blue-black coloring. The flesh is green, with a flat core in the middle. Under no circumstances should you eat them, as they contain hydrogen cyanide in small quantities. The pulp is sour and astringent. Harvest the fruit after the frost, then they taste milder.
Schlehenfrüchte is a wild form of plum and mirabelle. It can be z. For example, make jam or mus from them. (Image: Berty / fotolia.com) other names
Blackthorn is also known as blackthorn (unlike the similar hawthorn), as blackthorn, blackthorn, sapphire, Saudorn or Kietschkepflaume.
Healing tea and healing jam
The flowers make a healing tea. In addition the water should not have more than 70 degrees Celsius, in order not to weaken the contents. Whether the tea pulls for a long time does not matter. We do not need to strain it either. This tea was traditionally used to cleanse the blood, as a remedy for bladder cramps, edema, gout and rheumatism, and against stress. They drink about three cups a day. The flowers can be fresh or dried. The tea should also act against kidney stones and gallstones and fight inflammation of the respiratory tract.
From the fruits you can make jam or mus. The latter also helps against inflammation, stimulates digestion, relieves flatulence and promotes appetite. The dried fruit may taste sour, but it reduces the pain of inflammation of the gums. The tannins contract tissue and thereby slow blood flow. Dried fruits are also beneficial for stomach cramps and urinary tract disorders.
Incidentally, blackthorn tea is also ideal for children who suffer from flatulence, stomach ache or constipation.
Sloe for the skin
Mature sloe fruits are excellent for facial masks. These make the skin elastic, and it looks younger. Sloe-derived oil reduces stretch marks. A cream from blackthorn provides the skin with moisture.
Tench juice contains vitamin C, tannins and acids. Applied externally, it works against rash, boils and acne. In addition, it activates the skin metabolism, which ensures better blood circulation and a healthier skin.
Mature sloe fruits are excellent for facial masks. These make the skin elastic, and it looks younger. (Image: Yeko Photo Studio / fotolia.com) Sloe for the teeth
A syrup made from sloe fruits is suitable for preventing gingivitis and strengthening the teeth. You can also remove tartar by applying this syrup directly to the teeth. Alternatively, you can gargle with tea from the flowers and pull it through the teeth.
Sloe - biology
The sloe bush has a black bark. That's why he's called Blackthorn. In contrast to the white flowers that appear at the end of March. In contrast to the similar hawthorn, the flowers appear before the leaves show up. The scent of the flowers is reminiscent of almonds. They have five petals, about 20 stamens and are of great importance as a nutritive plant for insects and butterflies.
Prunus spinosa, the Latin name, grows up to three meters high and is widespread in Europe and western Asia. The sloe is widely distributed, and in nature a typical plant of the forest edge and generally the transition from the forest to the open landscape. Blackthorn is a Leitpflanze for natural hedges of fields, meadows, fields and cottage gardens, where he settled naturally.
Blackthorn is a root creep pioneer. The roots are not deep, but they are wide and form saplings. Over the years, a single sloe hedge grows from a single seed. This displaces in pioneer biotopes without further ado the herbs settled there. The blackthorn can not be found in the dense forest, because it needs a lot of light. Instead, it is a typical pioneer plant on abandoned meadows with lots of nutrients, calcareous soil and the company of buckthorn.
Nationwide propagation
The nature of its propagation helps: The thorny shrubs provide a perfect hiding place for various birds and mammals. Warblers, backbeams and wrens are at home here. The red-backed shrike spears on the long thorns its prey from insects, amphibians and reptiles. Birds not only use the blackthorn as a hiding place, but eat the fruits in huge quantities. In the fall, it is teeming with juniper, single-song, mistletoe, red-eared thrush, blackbirds and all other berry-eating birds.
These fly to the next sloe hedge, excrete the seeds with their feces and thus ensure a widespread distribution. In other words, everywhere where thrushes settle, sloe will grow next year. In addition, the sloe forms subterranean foothills, so that it takes more and more space in the area.
Birds not only use the blackthorn as a hiding place, but eat the fruits in huge quantities. By excreting the seeds, they ensure the spread of blackthorn. (Image: alan1951 / fotolia.com) The blackthorn in the culture
People have been using the blackthorn since the Stone Age, and the "Eismann Ötzi" also brought down sloe fruits. Finds from a pile dwelling on Lake Constance show that perforated black reef cores probably served as jewelry. Cattle breeders and villagers loved the blackthorn and gave it the nickname "living barbed wire". The finger-long thorns are as sharp as they are hard and even provide for flat trekking tires. Sloe hedges are perfect for keeping livestock from running away, and robbers bar their way to sheep and cattle. An ermine can pass through a hedge hedge, for a wolf or fox it is an obstacle that can hardly be overcome.
Our ancestors extracted ink from the bark and are also ideal for fortifications because it forms long-range roots, withstands the wind and spreads well. Sloe was the first choice for hedgerows in difficult terrain: on dikes, they keep wolves from the flocks, they grow on steep mountain slopes, river banks and embankments - so wherever stone walls hardly or not at all build.
The extremely hard wood was used for walking sticks and whip stalks. As a walking stick such sticks could also be used well for self-defense.
Mythology of the Blackthorn
This protection, which at the same time poses a danger - if one seizes oneself in the thorns - gave the sloe a firm place in the mythology. Unlike the blessing elderberry, the blackthorn is ambivalent in mythology. The blackthorn shows the positive and negative sides of life, emphasized by the black bark and the bright flowers. In the spring, the white flowers stand for the renewal of life, in late October, the bare blackish wood for the coming darkness. So the sloe was always a home of dark gods.
Blackthorn, like elderberry, should protect from witches and keep away lightning. That's why peasants planted them around the farms, in keeping with the practicalities of an effective living wall that cost no money.
A walking stick made of sloe wood was used by travelers as protection against evil spirits on nocturnal paths in solitude. Even the fairies lived in the branches of the blackthorn among the Celts. Sloe bushes were a border between the world of humans and the Otherworld, and those who dreamed in their shadows could, like Alice in Wonderland, enter the invisible world.
A walking stick made of sloe wood was used by travelers as protection against evil spirits on nocturnal paths in solitude. The extremely hard wood is also suitable without a mystical aspect as a walking stick. (Image: Blickfang / fotolia.com) Grow sloe
A sloe in the natural garden is an almost forgotten gem. If you plant blackthorn in the hedge, you effectively prevent burglars, protect songbirds from marauding cats, provide them with delicious as well as healthy fruits and enjoy a white sea of leaves in early spring.
Blackthorn is also growing slowly. So if you keep the foothills in check, you can bring the blackthorn well under control. For a bird and insect paradise in the garden, you can take care of the blackthorn without much effort. If your soil is not very acidic, planting is very easy. They are looking for a sunny spot on the edge of the garden, so where they want to make a boundary, dig a hole of twice the circumference of the root ball, plant and water the first few weeks. After that you leave the sloe to yourself. It is tough. Two years later, it will be hard for unpleasant neighbors to look into their garden.
Out of fashion?
In recent years the blackthorn has experienced a renaissance because of the healthy characteristics of its berries. In gardens, they have mostly replaced rhododendrons and cherry laurels. The former has little use for native wildlife, and the cherry laurel is an ecological catastrophe that even microbes can not deal with. Presumably these exotics were booming earlier because they are easier to handle.
Harvesting sloe crops can be painful if you accidentally pick the thorns. Therefore you should always wear gloves when picking, but these also often keep the tips only makeshift. However, those who engage in the blackthorn, who spends the time to cook the fruits, to process jelly, juice or syrup, will not be able to get away from them. The tart and tart taste can not be replaced by other fruits.
The best choice for difficult gardens
Especially the blackthorn is suitable for difficult gardens. Is your garden on a slope? Is there a dead corner, a place next to the garage, a bank, a sloping ditch? Here the sloe offers itself like no other plant.
In the middle of the garden you should not plant the blackthorn. Although it is beautiful as a solitaire, the foothills make sure that you are busy picking the shoots out of the grass. This applies not only to the garden lawn manicured with nail scissors, but also to a wildflower meadow that would soon mutate into shrubbery without controlling the sprouting sloe.
Tip: Put a root barrier. To do this, place a plastic tarpaulin, metal or wooden plate or a net about 50 cm deep into the ground, where the blackthorn should no longer grow. A weed fleece works wonders. This should be planted. If the blackthorn has thrown out its net of creeping roots, then it is not too late, but costs a lot of work to curb it again.
Sloe in community
Would you like to do good things for birds and insects and even harvest delicious fruits and experience colorful flowers? Then plant sloes together with elderberry, wild blackberry, raspberry, gooseberry, viburnum, hawthorn, spiked cape and broom in a natural hedge. The advantage: You do not have to do anything except cut the hedge once a year and you will be rewarded with healing teas, fruits, juices and marmalade. (Dr. Utz Anhalt)