Cranberries
Cranberry is a creeping polukustarnichek, with long, threadlike rooting shoots. Do not fall for the winter leaves cranberries are very small, leathery, silvery-green color. The fruit of cranberry - globular, juicy, red berry polyspermous sour taste matures, it is usually in September.
Grows in boggy pine and mixed forests, peat bogs of the whole area of coniferous forest and tundra in the European part of our countries in all regions of Siberia, Kamchatka and Sakhalin. Taste qualities of cranberries, her amazing ability to persist for many months in fresh condition and carry long-term transportation make the fruits of this plant is the most valuable gift of the Russian forests, which paid tribute to our ancestors for more than a millennium ago.
Generic name "oksikokkus" derives from the Greek " oksis "(acid) and kokkos (seed, grain), due to the sour taste of fruits. Perhaps, cranberries can be called a treasure of sphagnum bogs. The most beautiful wetlands in the autumn, if the beads are scattered red berries. The population of tens of tons annually harvests cranberries, but this is only a tenth of the harvest of wild bushes. Cranberries contain organic acids, carbohydrates, vitamins, benzoic acid, which ensures the safety of them for many months, one has only to fill with fresh water, like cranberries, and periodically replenish its level as water evaporates.
< br> cranberry has long been used for therapeutic purposes, mainly as a vitamin drink, inflammatory diseases, rheumatism, hypertension, malaria, as an antipyretic and soft money. In folk medicine, Yakutia and the leaves are used, the infusion of which are recommended for arthritis, rheumatism and colds. Beautiful and cranberry syrup, extracts, fruit drinks, kvass, jam, etc., collect berries and early spring, so-called nival cranberries; overwintered under snow berries contain fewer vitamins, but the taste is superior to the autumn.
< p>In cosmetics, fruit can be used as whitening and nourishing mask, then we should impose nourishing cream, sour cream or any other greasy basis. Piece of gauze with a hole cut in it for eyes and nose, moisten with the juice and lightly wring out, put on your face and neck after 15 minutes the mask off with cold water. Mask is applied 3-4 times a week. In the tundra and northern taiga growing small-fruited cranberry, similar to the ordinary, but the smaller size.
propagated mainly vegetatively, forming adventitious roots on shoots. The annual growth of runner - up to half. Cultivate cranberries: there are 200 cultivars of this plant.