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Herbs & Plants

Pachira aquatica

Botanical Name: Pachira aquatica
Family: Malvaceae
Genus: Pachira
Species: P. aquatica
Kingdom: Plantae
Order: Malvales

Common Names :Malabar chestnut, Guiana chestnut, provision tree, saba nut, Monguba (Brazil), Pumpo

Habitat : Pachira aquatica is native to Central and South America where it grows in swamps.. It is cultivated in many tropical regions, including Hawaii and Southern California. In the wild, Pachira aquatica is a wetland tree that grows in freshwater swamps associated with tropical estuaries. It often grows alongside rivers, where its branches arch out over the water.

Description:
Guiana chestnut is a spreading tree that grows to 60 ft (15 m) in the wild, but it is usually more like a large shrub in cultivation. It has greenish bark and shiny, dark green, compound, 8-10 in (20-25 cm) leaves that look like those of a schefflera (Schefflera actinophylla). The flowers emerge from 14 in (35.6 cm) long buds. They are usually almost hidden by the dense foliage, which stays on the tree during the bloom period, unlike that of similar Bombax and Chorisia species. The cream colored petals of the large flowers droop and disappear to show off dramatic clusters of 3-4 in (7.6-10 cm) crimson-tipped, off-white stamens. They are followed by football shaped woody pods which may reach 12 in (30.5 cm) in length and 5 in (12.7 cm)inches in diameter. Tightly packed nuts within the pod enlarge until about a 0.5 in (1.3 cm) in diameter and the pod bursts open.

You may click to see the pictures…>...(01)..…..(1)…..(2)……...(3)…...(4)..

Propagation: Plants are easily started from seed and will root from cuttings. The tree grows well as a tropical ornamental in moist, frost-free areas, and can be started from seed or cutting. It is a durable plant and will adapt very well to different conditions. The pachira needs plenty of sunlight though it is important to avoid direct sunlight during the summer months as the leaves may get sunburned.

Edible Uses:
The nuts taste sort of like peanuts. They are harvested when the seed pods burst and eaten raw, roasted, or fried. They also can be ground into a flour for baking bread. The young leaves and flowers may be cooked and used as a vegetable.

Medicinal Uses:
A popular beverage tea to build the blood in old age, to treat anemia and exhaustion, and for low blood pressure.  For kidney pain, cut a seed form the fruit in quarters; boil in 1 cup of water for 5 minutes and drink before breakfast for 3 consecutive days.  Boil a piece of bark 2.5 x 10 cm in 3 cups water for 10 minutes; drink ½ cup 6 times daily as a general tonic to build blood and strength.

Disclaimer:
The information presented herein is intended for educational purposes only. Individual results may vary, and before using any supplements, it is always advisable to consult with your own health care provider.

Resources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pachira_aquatica
http://www.floridata.com/ref/p/pach_aqu.cfm
http://www.plantcreations.com/pachira_aquatica.htm
http://www.herbnet.com/Herb%20Uses_C.htm

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Herbs & Plants

Chinese Chestnut

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Botanical Name : Castanea mollissima
Family: Fagaceae
Genus: Castanea
Species: C. mollissima
Kingdom: Plantae
Order: Fagales

Synonyms:Castanea bungeana Blume; C. duclouxii Dode; C. fargesii Dode; C. formosana (Hayata) Hayata; C. hupehensis Dode; C. mollissima var. pendula X. Y. Zhou & Z. D. Zhou; C. sativa Miller var. formosana Hayata; C. sativa var. mollissima (Blume) Pampanini; C. vulgaris Lamarck var. yunnanensis Franchet.

Common Name :Chinese Chestnut

Habitat : Castanea mollissima is native to China.In the provinces of Anhui, Fujian, Gansu, Guangdong, Guangxi, Guizhou, Hebei, Henan, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangsu, Jiangxi, Liaoning, Nei Mongol, Qinghai, Shaanxi, Shandong, Shanxi, Sichuan, Xizang, Yunnan, and Zhejiang, and also to Taiwan and Korea. It grows close to sea level in the north of its range, and at altitudes of up to 2,800 m in the south of the range. The species prefers full sun and acidic, loamy soil, and has a medium growth rate

Description:
It is a deciduous tree growing to 20 m tall with a broad crown. The leaves are alternate, simple, 10–22 cm long and 4.5–8 cm broad, with a toothed margin. The flowers are produced in catkins 4–20 cm long, with the female flowers at the base of the catkin and males on the rest. The fruit is a densely spiny cupule 4–8 cm diameter, containing two or three glossy brown nuts; these are 2–3 cm diameter on wild trees. The scientific name mollissima derives from the softly downy shoots and young leaves
……………CLICK & SEE THE PICTURES.

In Vietnam, Chinese chestnut  which are grown in Trùng Khánh district, Cao B?ng province (Castanea mollissima Bl.) have highest quality with 3,3-5,4% glucose, 43,36- 46,47% glucid, 1,16 – 2% lipid, 3,12 – 3,62% protein analyzed by Vietnam National Vegetable and Fruit Researching Institution in 1999

Edible Uses:
The nuts are edible, and the tree is widely cultivated in eastern Asia; over 300 cultivars have been selected for nut production, subdivided into five major regional groups: Northern, Yangtze River Valley, Sichuan and Guizhou, Southern and Southwestern. Besides that, the Dandong chestnut (belonging to the Japanese chestnut – Castanea crenata) is a major cultivar in Liaoning Province. Some cultivars, such as ‘Kuling’, ‘Meiling’, and ‘Nanking’, have large nuts up to 4 cm diameter. The nuts are sweet, and considered by some to have the best taste of any chestnut, though others state they are not as good as the American Chestnut. The nuts also provide a significant food source for wildlife.

Medicinal Uses:
A decoction of the burrs is used in the treatment of diarrhea, uncontrollable nose bleed, dysentery, regurgitation and profound thirst. The flowers are used in the treatment of scrofula. The stem bark is used to treat poisoned wounds whilst the stem sap is used to treat lacquer poisoning.

Disclaimer:
The information presented herein is intended for educational purposes only. Individual results may vary, and before using any supplements, it is always advisable to consult with your own health care provider.

Resources:
http://www.herbnet.com/Herb%20Uses_C.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castanea_mollissima

http://www.southeasternflora.com/view_flora.asp?plantid=462#

http://www.hort.net/gallery/view/fag/casmo50

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Herbs & Plants

Prunus lauroceerasus

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Botanical Name : Prunus lauroceerasus
Family: Rosaceae
Genus: Prunus
Subgenus: Cerasus, or Laurocerasus
Section: Laurocerasus
Species: P. laurocerasus
Kingdom: Plantae
Order: Rosales

Common Names:Cherry Laurel,English laurel

Habitat :Prunus lauroceerasus is native to regions bordering the Black Sea in southwestern Asia and southeastern Europe, from Albania and Bulgaria east through Turkey to the Caucasus Mountains and northern Iran

Description:
Prunus laurocerasus is an evergreen shrub or small tree, growing to 5–15 metres (16–49 ft) tall, rarely to 18 metres (59 ft) tall, with a trunk up to 60-cm broad. The leaves are dark green, leathery, shiny, (5–)10–25(–30)-cm wide and 4–10-cm broad, with a finely serrated margin. The leaves can have the smell of almonds when crushed.
CLICK  & SEE THE PICTURES
The flower buds appear in early spring and open in early summer in erect 7–15-cm racemes of 30–40 flowers, each flower 1-cm broad, with five creamy-white petals and numerous yellowish stamens.

CLICK & SEE

The fruit is a small cherry 1–2-cm broad, turning black when ripe in early autumn.   Unlike the rest of the plant, which is poisonous, the cherries are edible, although rather bland and with a somewhat dry smack compared to the fruit of apricots, true cherries, plums, and peaches, to which it is related. The seeds contained within the berries are poisonous like the rest of the plant, containing cyanogenic glycosides and amygdalin.[6] This chemical composition is what gives the smell of almonds when the leaves are crushed.

Cultivation:
Prunus laurocerasus is a widely cultivated ornamental plant, used for planting in gardens and parks in temperate regions worldwide. It is often used for hedges, a screening plant, and as a massed landscape plant. Most cultivars are tough shrubs that can cope with difficult growing conditions, including shaded and dry conditions, and which respond well to pruning.

Medicinal Uses:
The fresh leaves are of value in the treatment of coughs, whooping cough, asthma, dyspepsia and indigestion. Externally, a cold infusion of the leaves is used as a wash for eye infections.  A reliable sedative and frequently the principal agent in cough medicine.  Cherry-laurel water (Aqua Laurocerasi) is produced by distillation. In homeopathy, a tincture produced from the leaves is used as a sedative.  It may also be used externally in soothing poultices.

Other uses
Laurel water, a distillation made from the plant, has a pharmacological usage. The foliage is also used for cut greenery in floristry.

Disclaimer:
The information presented herein is intended for educational purposes only. Individual results may vary, and before using any supplements, it is always advisable to consult with your own health care provider.

Resources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prunus_laurocerasus
http://www.herbnet.com/Herb%20Uses_C.htm
http://movies-honoratocainelvis.blogspot.com/2011/03/prunus-laurocerasus-etna.html
http://trees.stanford.edu/ENCYC/PRUNUSlau.htm

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Herbs & Plants

American Chestnut

Botanical Name :Castanea dentata
Family: Fagaceae
Genus: Castanea
Species: C. dentata
Kingdom: Plantae
Order: Fagales

Common Name :American Chestnut

Habitat : Castanea dentata is native to eastern North America. Before the species was devastated by the chestnut blight, a fungal disease, it was one of the most important forest trees throughout its range.

Description:
A rapidly growing deciduous hardwood tree, it reached up to 30–45 meters (100–150 ft) tall and 3 meters (10 ft) in diameter, and ranged from Maine and southern Ontario to Mississippi, and from the Atlantic coast to the Appalachian Mountains and the Ohio Valley. There are several related chestnut species, such as the European Sweet Chestnut, Chinese Chestnut, and Japanese Chestnut, which are distinguishable only with difficulty from the American species. C. dentata can be best identified by the larger and more widely spaced saw-teeth on the edges of its leaves, as indicated by the scientific name dentata, Latin for “toothed”. The leaves, which are 14–20 centimeters (5–8 in) long and 7–10 centimeters (3–4 in) broad, also tend to average slightly shorter and broader than those of the Sweet Chestnut. The blight-resistant Chinese Chestnut is now the most commonly planted chestnut species in the U.S. It can be distinguished from the American Chestnut by its hairy twig tips which are in contrast to the hairless twigs of the American Chestnut. The chestnuts are in the beech family along with beech and oak, and are not closely related to the horse-chestnut, which is in the family Sapindaceae.
CLICK & SEE THE PICTURES
The American Chestnut is a prolific bearer of nuts, usually with three nuts enclosed in each spiny green burr, and lined in tan velvet. The nuts develop through late summer, the burrs opening and falling to the ground near the first fall frost.

The American Chestnut was a very important tree for wildlife, providing much of the fall mast for species such as White-tailed Deer and Wild Turkey and, formerly, the Passenger Pigeon. Black Bears were also known to eat the nuts to fatten up for the winter.

Medicinal Uses:
The Indians made a tea from the leaves to treat whooping cough and the same tea has been used as a sedative and tonic.  The bark was used to treat worms and dysentery.

Other Uses:
The nuts were once an important economic resource in the U.S., being sold on the streets of towns and cities, as they sometimes still are during the Christmas season (usually “roasting on an open fire” so their smell is readily identifiable many blocks away). Chestnuts are edible raw or roasted, though typically preferably roasted. Nuts of the European Sweet Chestnut are now sold instead in many stores. One must peel the brown skin to access the yellowish-white edible portion. The unrelated horse-chestnut’s “conkers” are poisonous without extensive preparation.

The wood is straight-grained, strong, and easy to saw and split, and it lacks the radial end grain found on most other hardwoods. The tree was particularly valuable commercially since it grew at a faster rate than oaks. Being rich in tannins, the wood was highly resistant to decay and therefore used for a variety of purposes, including furniture, split-rail fences, shingles, home construction, flooring, piers, plywood, paper pulp, and telephone poles. Tannins were also extracted from the bark for tanning leather. Although larger trees are no longer available for milling, much chestnut wood has been reclaimed from historic barns to be refashioned into furniture and other items. “Wormy” chestnut refers to a defective grade of wood that has insect damage, having been sawn from long-dead blight-killed trees. This “wormy” wood has since become fashionable for its rustic character.

This tree is not considered a particularly good patio shade tree because its droppings are prolific and a considerable nuisance. Catkins in the spring, spiny nut pods in the fall, and leaves in the early winter can all be a problem. These characteristics are more or less common to all shade trees, but perhaps not to the same degree as with the chestnut. The spiny seed pods are a particular nuisance when scattered over an area frequented by people.

Montreal, Quebec, is famous for its abundance of chestnuts in the downtown core during the autumn months. One may find a festival of ripened harvested chestnuts along rue Sherbrooke. Native Montréalers dub it the Le Festival De La Châtaigne, which generally occurs during the last week of September.

Disclaimer:
The information presented herein is intended for educational purposes only. Individual results may vary, and before using any supplements, it is always advisable to consult with your own health care provider.

Resources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Chestnut
http://www.herbnet.com/Herb%20Uses_C.htm

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Ailmemts & Remedies

Nephritis

Definition:
Nephritis is inflammationof the nephrons of one or both of the kidneys – the organs that filter the blood and get rid of excess fluid and unwanted chemicals.  The inflammation can affect the kidneys’ function, including their ability to filter waste and this can be caused by many different conditions.

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Symptoms may develop as the disease gets worse, but as nephritis resolves completely in about 60 per cent of adults and as many as 90 per cent of children, for many it comes and goes with little disruption to their life.

The downside is that for those in whom the disease doesn’t get better and instead progresses into a more severe condition, advanced kidney (renal) failure may have developed before they have had any reason to seek medical help.

Types:
*Glomerulonephritis is inflammation of the glomeruli. (When the term “nephritis” is used without qualification, this is often the condition meant.)...CLICK & SEE

*Interstitial nephritis or tubulo-interstitial nephritis is inflammation of the spaces between renal tubules……CLICK & SEE

*Pyelonephritis is inflammation that results from a urinary tract infection that reaches the pyelum (pelvis) of the kidney…….CLICK & SEE

*Lupus nephritis is an inflammation of the kidney caused by systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), a disease of the immune system....CLICK & SEE

Symptoms:
Symptoms of nephritis include:

•Swelling of the tissues (initially the face and around the eyes, later more prominent in the legs)
•Reduction in urine volume
•Dark urine (contains blood which may not be visible)
•Increase in blood pressure
•Headaches
•Drowsiness
•Visual disturbances
•Tiredness and general malaise (feeling ill)
•Nausea
•In rapidly progressive disease, loss of appetite, vomiting, abdominal pain and joint pain may occur
•Chronic nephritis may go unnoticed for years until symptoms of kidney failure appear: tiredness, itchy skin, nausea and vomiting, shortness of breath

About half of those who develop acute nephritis actually have no symptoms. If symptoms do develop, they point clearly to the problem. The inflammation causes blood and protein to leak into the urine. As protein levels in the blood fall, excess fluid accumulates in the body.

Tests show protein, blood cells, and kidney cells in the urine, while a high concentration of the body’s waste products of metabolism (such as urea and creatinine) may be found in the blood.

Swabs of the throat may show there’s been a streptococcal infection, while blood tests may be used to check for antibodies to streptococci or other infections, or signs of an abnormal immune response.

Sometimes a small biopsy or sample of tissue is taken from the kidney to examine in the laboratory.

Causes:
The causes of nephritis (or acute nephritic syndrome as the collection of symptoms is sometimes called) tend to be different in adults and children.

One of the commonest, especially in children, is after infection with the streptococcus bacteria, which leads to an immune reaction that damages the filtering units of the kidney known as the glomeruli. This condition is called post-streptococcal glomerulonephritis.

Other causes seen more frequently in children than adults include Henoch-Schönlein purpura (an inflammation of the blood vessels caused by an abnormal immune response) and haemolytic-uraemic syndrome (an abnormal immune reaction with triggers including gastrointestinal infection).

Risk Factors:
In adults, diseases that frequently underlie nephritis include vasculitis (inflammation of the blood vessels), pneumonia, abscesses, infections such as measles, mumps or glandular fever, hepatitis, and a range of different immune disorders that cause types of glomerulonephritis.

In more serious, rapidly progressive glomerulonephritis, about half of people remember having had a flu-like illness in the month before symptoms start.

Diagnosis:
Your doctor may suspect lupus nephritis if your urine is bloody or has a foamy appearance, if you have high blood pressure, or if you show signs of swelling in your hands or feet. Diagnostic tests for lupus nephritis  may include:

*Renal function testing.  Nephrologists may use a variety of tests, including blood tests and 24-hour urine collection, to accurately measure your kidney function. Iothalamate clearance testing, which uses a special contrast agent to track how well your kidneys are filtering, may be done if traditional tests don’t provide clear measurement of your kidney function.

*Kidney biopsy. Biopsy is the gold-standard test to confirm the diagnosis of many kidney diseases, including lupus nephritis. It can also help determine the severity of the disease. Because of the large number of people treated for kidney diseases.

Treatment :
The treatment of nephritis depends on the type and cause of the condition. The aim is to reduce inflammation, limit the damage to the kidneys and support the body until kidney function is back to normal.

Restriction of sodium (salt), potassium, protein and fluids in the diet may be necessary. Sometimes bed rest is advised. Steroids, or more powerful immunosuppressant drugs, may be given to reduce the inflammation.

Antibiotics may be needed too, although in many cases the infection that initially triggered the nephritis has long since gone. Medication may also be needed to control blood pressure.

In severe cases, renal dialysis may be necessary, although this may only be a temporary measure.

Adults are slower to recover than children and more likely to develop complications or progress into chronic nephritis. Acute nephritic syndrome is unlikely to recur, but if it does there’s at least a one in three chance that an adult will develop what is known as ‘end-stage kidney disease’, leaving them in need of permanent dialysis or a kidney transplant.

Disclaimer: This information is not meant to be a substitute for professional medical advise or help. It is always best to consult with a Physician about serious health concerns. This information is in no way intended to diagnose or prescribe remedies.This is purely for educational purpose

Resources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nephritis
http://www.bbc.co.uk/health/physical_health/conditions/nephritis1.shtml
http://www.mayoclinic.org/lupus-nephritis/diagnosis.html
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Diffuse_proliferative_lupus_nephritis.jpg

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