Medicinal plant Matricary Matricaria recutita wilde Kamille
Chamomile is one of the oldest favourites amongst garden herbs and its reputation as a medicinal plant shows little signs of abatement The Egyptians reverenced it for its virtues and from their belief in its power to cure ague dedicated it to their gods No plant was better known to the country folk of old it having been grown for centuries in English gardens for its use as a common domestic medicine to such an extent that the old herbals agree that it is but lost time and labour to describe it The whole plant is odoriferous and of value but the quality is chiefly centred in the flower heads or capitula the part employed medicinally the herb itself being used in the manufacture of herb beers Both single and double flowers are used in medicine It is considered that the curative properties of the single wild Chamomile are the more powerful as the chief medical virtue of the plant lies in the central disk of yellow florets and in the cultivated double form the white florets of the ray are multiplied while the yellow centre diminishes The powerful alkali contained to so much greater extent in the single flowers is however liable to destroy the coating of the stomach and bowels and it is doubtless for this reason that the British Pharmacopceia directs that the official dried Chamomile flowers shall be those of the double cultivated variety The double flowered form was already well known in the sixteenth century It was introduced into Germany from Spain about the close of the Middle Ages Chamomile was largely cultivated before the war in Belgium France and Saxony and also in England chiefly in the famous herbgrowing district of Mitcham English flowerheads are considered the most valuable for distillation of the oil and during the war the price of English and foreign Chamomile reached an exorbitant figure The Scotch Chamomile of commerce is the Single or Wild Chamomile the yellow tubular florets in the centre of the head being surrounded by a variable number of white ligula
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Keywords: chamomile, kamille, matricaria, matricary, medicinal, plant, recutita, wilde
