Borage

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Borago Officinalis, Borage, Cool Tankard, Cover Crop, Starflower, Tailwort, Talewort

Often found as a weed in wastelands and fields. It’s also cultivated in gardens, bred as early greens with a cucumber scent (hence the name).

This is a biennial plant of the borage family. 20-60 cm. The stem is branched, thick, bristly- hairy-pubescent. Leaves are fleshy, hard-haired, whole, alternate, and finely dentate along the margin.

The lower leaves are large petiolate, and ovoid, upper ones are much smaller, sessile, and oval.

Blooms in June – July. Flowers are blue, drooping, located at the ends of the stems and collected in a sprawling shield-paniculate inflorescence. The fruit is an oblong dark nut and is brown in colour.

The medicinal raw material is the herb. cut it off in time flowering near the ground, cleaned of substandard lower leaves. Dry in the sun, laying out a thin layer, or in a ventilated area.

The leaves contain ascorbic, malic and citric acids, carotene, mucous and tannins, a significant amount of potassium, and saponins. The flowers contain mucus and ethereal butter.

Borage preparations have sedative, diuretic, diaphoretic, laxative, enveloping, and regulating metabolism properties.

It is used orally for articular rheumatism and other pains in the joints and muscles, with gout, edema, inflammation of the kidneys and urinary tract, cholelithiasis and urolithiasis, increased nervous excitability, heart neuroses, fears, insomnia, externally for skin diseases.

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