Botanical description
Stems 15-75 cm tall, ascending from base, simple or branched, hairy whitish-tipped in lower part.
Flowers are aggregated in multicolored false whorls, dense, almost globular.
The fruit is an ovoid, yellow-brown, spotted, glossy, finely tuberculate nut.
Blooms in June-August. Fruits ripen in July-September.
Chemical Composition
The plant contains tannins and resinous substances, essential oil (up to 0.06%), bitter substances marrubin and marrubiin, mineral salts, alkaloids (betonitsin, turinitsin). The essential oil has a pleasant odor; the presence of azulene gives it a blue color.
The seeds contain 26.35% fatty oil.
Stachydrin, tannins, resins, diterpenes marribanoside, maribiin, marrubiol, peregrinol, vulgarol, and others are also found in the composition.
Significance and use
The above-ground part of the plant is suitable for use in the distillery and brewing industry.
Medicinal properties of chandra common are known from antiquity. Pharmacological tests have established that the plant preparations regulate cardiac activity (eliminate extrasystole). Shandra ordinary is included in the European Pharmacopoeia, the British Herbal Pharmacopoeia and pharmacopoeias of other European countries.
Alcohol extract can be used as an anti-coughing agent in chronic respiratory diseases[8]. Chandra glycosides have been found to have a pronounced antiatherosclerotic effect.
In folk medicine, the plant was used for bronchial asthma, whooping cough, upper respiratory tract catarrh, as a means to increase appetite, sedative, expectorant, antimalarial, choleretic, for cardiac weakness and arrhythmia, jaundice, malaria, urolithiasis.
From the above-ground part of the plant you can get black paint.
A good honeybee producer, it gives high-sugar, transparent, very fragrant and easily accessible to bees nectar. Honey is high quality, fragrant. Honey production of 50 kg / ha. Even a slight admixture of nectar from the flowers of Chandra ordinary gives the honeys an exceptionally delicate scent.