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Pulsatilla Pratensis

Reduces vertigo and nausea after chemotherapy

  • Family. Ranunculaceae (Crowfoot Family).

  • Synonyms. Latin: Anemone pratensis L., Pulsatilla nigricans Stoerck, Anemone pulsatilla L. Spanish: pulsatilla negrusca, coquelurda, flor del viento, anemona de los prados. English: Wind flower, Meadow anemone. French: Anémone pulsatille, Pulsatille. German: Wiesneküchenschelle.

  • Description. A deciduous, perennial plant. The stems grow to a height of 10 to 40 cm (up to 45 cm in fruit), are covered with a silvery white indumentum and bear a single, erect or slightly nodding, flower, 5.5-8.5 cm in diameter. Basal rosettes consist of just a few leaves, and they are surrounded at the base by black, dead leaves from the previous year, inside which are narrowly to broadly deltoid cataphylls about 20 mm long with ciliate margins that - with the development of the petiole and lamina - intergrade smoothly to the leaves, which are hardly unfolded at flowering time. The leaves extend on slim stalks from a broad, approximately semiamplexicaul base. They usually have five to seven, occasionally three or four unpaired pinnae, which are divided into numerous, linear lobes that bear a hair-like awn at the apex. The undersides of the petiole and lamina have a varyingly dense indumentum of silky white hairs. The flower stalks are 5 to 7 mm in diameter and bear a whorl of three varyingly fused, sessile floral bracts, each divided into three to eleven linear lobes, the whorl initially tightly enclosing the still short flower stalk and bud. Both parts of the stem continue to grow until the fruit has ripened, so that the whorl of bracts is eventually located more than halfway down the stem. The campanulate flowers have six, occasionally up to eight elongated-elliptical, acuminate sepals which are 10 to 20 mm wide and 30 to 35 mm long, gray-violet and hairy on the outside and bright violet and glabrous on the inside. The numerous stamens are no more than half the length of the perianth, and are arranged into a dense hemisphere or short cylinder. The numerous free-standing ovaries are completely enclosed by the styles and stamens. They bear thin, green styles that are gathered together into a barrel-shaped cluster and initially hardly extend beyond the stamens. Their violet tips are bent slightly outwards and remain attached to the fruits, developing into long awns. The light brown, ascending or erect, fusiform, usually multiheaded rhizome is 10 to 15 mm thick and has a few strong side roots. The rhizome and roots are covered all over with blackish-brown, thin, branched wiry rootlets 20 to 30 cm long..

  • Habitat. Open fields and plains, in dry places in many parts of Europe, Russia, and Turkey.

  • Used parts. The fresh flowering plant.