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News from the Station

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April 2018

tranzit. ro/ București
Str. Gazelei 44, sector 4

''In our country some of the most diverse and desired medicinal plants are growing. This richness must however be kept, maintained and developed for it to be used year after year. Without permanent care, this large diversity of medicinal plants can decline and even disappear. This has happened in the past, when, as a consequence of unsound harvesting, some medicinal plants went almost extinct (bearberry, the great yellow gentian, garden angelica). Today these plants have been declared monuments of nature and their harvesting is forbidden.

[...]

Harvesters deliver the well-dried drugs to the acquisition centres. At these centres the products are received by each kind, quantitatively and qualitatively, paying attention that they correspond to the conditions described by the quality norms. The technician or person who’s doing the reception must check if the drug doesn’t have too high humidity, foreign smells, mould, mix with foreign pieces, parts of poisoning plants, plants that are too broken, etc.

[...]

The operations needed for the obtaining of a quality drug (the medicinal plant in its dried state) require the gatherers and technicians to respect a series of measures.

(...) A medicinal plant will represent a valuable product only when its aspect and content correspond to the quality conditions comprised in the target books, internal norms or standards. Otherwise the harvested plant doesn’t differ much from a weed, missing the medicinal traits, with the difference that in many cases it won’t be even possible to use it for feeding the animals, thus representing a wasted work, a lost good.

[...]

Due to the varied climate and to other favourable natural conditions, in our country there are over 300 medicinal plants growing spontaneously. This diversity is also explained through the fact that our country is found at the middle of the distance between the Equator and the North Pole and that it has multiple forms of relief and soil.

(...) Our country’s richness in medicinal plants has been known for a long time, but the bourgeois-landlord regime totally neglected its use. Things went that far that medicinal plants such as common nettle, common wormwood, linden flowers and others, which were found numerously in our lands, came to be imported.''

Lily-of-the-valley

May bells, Our Lady's tears, Mary's tears.

Convallaria majalis L. (Fam. Liliaceae)

Ung. Májusi gyöngyvirág
Germ. Maiglöckchen

Uses. It is part of the composition of medicines recommended for heart diseases. Its leaves shall not be used without the doctor’s approval, as they are poisonous.

Fragments from: Plante medicinale din flora spontană [Medicinal Plants from the Spontaneous Flora], Uniunea Centrală a Cooperativelor de Consum, București, 1962. Compiled by Farmacist Corneliu Constantinescu and engineer Artin Agopian.

Fragments selected by Raluca Voinea and Iuliana Dumitru, tranzit.ro/ Bucuresti, Experimental Research Station, Amborella Module.

Lilies-of-the-valley in the Tranzit Garden
Photo: Iuliana Dumitru
Photo dedicated to Livia Pancu