Thistle - medicinal and food homologous series
Thistle, the name of the Chinese medicine. It is a dried aerial part of the Asteraceae plant Spiny Vegetable. In summer and autumn, the flowers are harvested, removed from impurities, and dried in the sun.
Leaves: basal leaves and middle stem leaves oblong-oval, the leaf tip is blunt, the base is wedge-shaped, usually without petioles, sometimes with extremely short petioles; The upper stems and leaves are getting smaller; The edges of the leaves are wavy and curved, with fine needles, which grow close to the leaf margins, mostly at the tips of the toothed leaf margins. The upper surface is green and glabrous, while the lower leaf surface is pale green, sometimes gray-green by sparse or dense fluff.
Flowers: Cephalic inflorescences are single-stem-ended, and some plants contain a few or most cephalic inflorescences at the top of the stem branches, and are arranged in an umbel inflorescence. The total bracts are ovate, oblong-ovate, or ovate. The total bracts are about 6 layers, arranged in a tile-like arrangement, and gradually lengthen to the inner layer; The inner and innermost layers are oblong elliptical to linear; The outer bracts have short needles at the top, the inner and innermost tapers, membranous, short needles.
Modern pharmacological effects: Modern pharmacological studies have shown that thistle has a variety of pharmacological activities such as hemostasis, blood pressure lowering, antitumor, antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant and effect on the cardiovascular system. Clinically useful for the treatment of various bleeding, nephritis, hypertension, sores, hot shower (urethral burning during urination), hemospermia (mixed with blood components in male semen), allergic purpura, bladder cancer, kidney contusion, common warts (commonly known as "prickly", "fistula", is a benign skin hyperplasia caused by HPV infection of human papillomavirus).
