Horse chestnut Aescin.Horse Chestnut Extract.

Contents

• Botanical Basic Data of Horse chestnut.Aesculus hippocastanum.
• Narrative Hisdtory of Horse chestnut.Aesculuc,Aesculus hippocastanum.
• Description of Horse chestnut.Aesculus hippocastanum..
• Active constituents and mechanism of aescin from horsechestnut.
• Historical and Scientifical use of Horse chestnut.
• Indications,Combinations and Dosage of Horse chestnut.
• Safety and Toxicity Study.
• Research Update:Horse chestnut and aescin.

Description of Horse chestnut.Aesculus hippocastanum.:

It can reach 30 meters tall, and has striking candles of blooms in spring and early summer. Individual flowers have crumpled white petals with a yellow basal patch that changes to a dull red colour. The fruit has a lathery cae covered with short pickles. The seed are used to play conkers.

 The trunk of the tree is very erect and columnar, and grows very rapidly to a great height, with widely spreading branches. The bark is smooth and greyishgreen in colour: it has been used with some success in dyeing yellow. The wood, being soft and spongy, is of very little use for timber.

 The horse chestnut's scientific name is Aesculus hippocastanum. It grows naturally in the moist mountain valleys of parts of Albania and Greece. In the UK, horse chestnuts have been grown as ornamental trees, particularly in avenues or along roadsides for their spectacular "candles" of white flowers all over the tree in the spring.

 These trees are seen at their best when grown in the open reaching up to 35m (115ft) with the arching branches normally turned up at the ends. It is one of the largest flowering trees of the temperate world.

 The sturdy, many-ribbed boughs and thick buds of the Horse Chestnut make it a conspicuous tree even in winter. The buds are protected with a sticky substance: defended by fourteen scales and gummed together, thus no frost or damp can harm the leaf and flower tucked safely away within each terminal bud, which develops with startling rapidity with the approach of the first warm days after the winter. The bud will sometimes develop the season's shoot in the course of three or four weeks. The unfolding of the bud is very rapid when the sun melts the resin that binds it so firmly together.

 Horse chestnut leaves,flowers and fruit:

 The large leaves are divided into five or seven leaflets, spreading like fingers from the palm of the hand and have their margins finely toothed. All over the small branches may be found the curious marks in the shape of minute horse-shoes, from which, perhaps, the tree gets its name. They are really the leaf scars. Wherever a bygone leaf has been, can be traced on the bark a perfect facsimile of a horse-shoe, even to the seven nail markings, which are perfectly distinct. And among the twigs may be found some with an odd resemblance to a horse's foot and fetlock.

 The leaves are large and compound, in the form of a palm with the five or six leaflets spreading out like the fingers of a fat hand. The leaves fall in autumn to leave large horseshoe-shaped leaf scars.

 The flowers are mostly white, with a reddish tinge, or marking, and grow in dense, erect spikes. There is also a dull red variety, and a less common yellow variety, which is a native of the southern United States, but is seldom seen here.The flowers then give rise to the large globular green spiky fruit. These split open about September to reveal one to three large shiny, mahogany brown seeds or nuts - the "conkers".

 The fruit is a brown nut, with a very shining, polished skin, showing a dull, rough, pale-brown scar where it has been attached to the inside of the seed-vessel, a large green husk, protected with short spines, which splits into three valves when it falls to the ground and frees the nut.

 Cultivation of horse chestnut:

 The Horse Chestnut is generally raised from the nuts, which are collected in the autumn and sown in the early spring. The nuts should be preserved in sand during the winter, as they may become mouldy and rot. If steeped in water, they will germinate more quickly. They will grow 3 foot the first summer and require little care, being never injured by the cold of this climate. They thrive in most soils and situations, but do best in a good, sandy loam.

 Part Used Medicinally:

 The bark and the fruit, from both of which a fluid extract is made. The bark is stripped in the spring and dried in the sun, or by slight artificial heat, and when dry, occurs in commerce in flattened pieces, 4 to 5 inches long and about 1 to 1 1/2 inch broad-about 1 to 1 1/4 inch thick, greyish-brown externally, showing corky elongated warts, and on the inner surface pinkish-brown, finely striated longitudinally. The bark is odourless, but has a bitter astringent taste.

 Preparations:Fluid extract, fruit, 5 to 20 drops. Fluid extract, bark, 1/2 to 2 drachms.

Reference:

• 1.Horse chestnut Aescin.Horse Chestnut Extract.

This article written and edited via herbalist of MDidea Extracts Professional. They run a range of online descriptions about this herb,including general information related and summarized updating discoveries from findings of professional scientisits this field related.Describe style aimed to form a useful detecting literature space where the intertwined threshold and related questions raise out and visualize themselves.

♣ last edit date:12th,Oct.2010.