Flax flax, or Spark-grass

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When it blooms, it looks like a candle flame. And this lively light lasts until the end of summer, where on sand screes, where on a waste piece of land. The light plant is nothing more than common flax, the ubiquitous weed, which greatly annoys field growers and gardeners. Getting rid of it is not at all easy: even with a manual breakthrough, it is no, no, let it slip again. And the thing is that flax is a root-sprouting plant. If in the soil there remains at least a piece of horizontal root with a laid kidney, the bush will be right there again. After all, weeds are tenacious. Adult offspring of flax are almost indistinguishable from their predecessors, as strong and fresh.

Common flax (Linaria vulgaris) - herbaceous perennial plant, a species of the genus Flax; Now this genus is usually referred to the family Plantain (Plantaginaceae), previously placed in the family Norichen (Scrophulariaceae) or Veronica (Veronicaceae). Popular names of the plant: wild flax, gill, chistik.

Is it true that this grass will be made? The flowers are always closed, and delicate pollen will be preserved both in the rain and in the exhausting bucket. The stem is also protected, it is densely planted with regular leaves. Yes, and the leaves themselves are adapted for drought, because it is not without reason that they are narrow, solid and noticeably waxed. Such greens do not care. In the fall, look at the seeds - and they are original. When the coarse boxes crack on the scars and open up, the flax will shake out small discs thickened to the middle in the wind. This is the seeds. And the fact that the seed discs are surrounded by a film is also no accident. So it’s easier for them to take off and fly.

And finally, compare the rhizomes! In a flax, which has grown in a bore, the rhizome is developed splendidly, but instead of a stem, it takes out two lateral horizontal roots. This is understandable: the nutrient medium is closer to the surface of the forest litter. But on the arable land, a beautiful weed acquires a deeply penetrating root: such flax cannot be drowned out by green rivals. It turns out that the flax root rhizome can adapt to different soil conditions.

But nevertheless, the most surprising thing in flaxseed is the corolla of the flower. Lipped and similar to a pharynx, it is also endowed with a small vessel - a spur. This spur contains sweet juice, to which insects are so tasty. But this is bad luck: none of the six-legged, except for bumblebees, gives his flax. Bumblebees help her in pollination, and she, as it were, gives them a gift.

It happens like this. The shaggy bumblebee sits on the lower lip of the corolla, squeezes with force through the blades covering the pharynx, reaches the spur, launches the proboscis into nectar - and drinks, gathers fragrant liquid. While he is doing all this, the disturbed pollen of anthers is crumbling right on his back, unloading from the stamens. Now the bumblebee stands up, and in the air he will be with a burden. In another flower, our pollination mediator will apply pollen to the stigma, for which the winged breeder, in turn, will take a fraction of the nectar from the flax. The friendship here is so old that both the insect and the plant “adapted” to each other. In any case, flax does not trust its pollination to any of the insects.

Yes, and which of them can do this operation? After all, a long proboscis is the privilege of some bumblebees. And although there are many gourmands among insects, they cannot get flax nectar. True, some hymenoptera still managed to deliver nectar in a roundabout way: they gnaw at the spur from the outside and easily empty the poured vessel through the hole.

In addition to honey, flax is also famous as a good source of yellow paint. The beauty of the flowers of this plant did not go unnoticed: the garden forms of flax flax pleasing amateur naturalists with the freshness of color, an unusual combination of contour lines. It can be seen that the weed of the people was nicknamed the slipper for the fanciful nature of the flowers. The name “flax flax” is given for its resemblance to flax: before flowering, their leaves are very similar. But in some Russian villages this plant was called differently: branchial, gill, yellowberry, yellow bells, flax hares, coolant (cold to the touch), nipples, sugar candies, calf, and also under the mysterious name of grimon.

Flax flax was used in folk medicine for scabies and hemorrhoids, in some places it was used as a sleeping pill.

Common flaxseed does not possess the nutritional advantages. Moreover, it is not without reason considered poisonous for horses, cows, calves. Animals, poisoned by flax, feel depressed: they stop chewing gum, saliva, suffocate, and suffer from gastrointestinal upsets. Fortunately, such cases are rare, since cattle usually do not touch flax, and besides, it scares off pasture with both smell and taste. The toxicity of the grass is due to the presence of specific glucosides (linarin and pectolinarin), which cleave hydrocyanic acid. It is believed that flax is poisonous both the leaves and the stem, especially in the flowering phase.

In total, botanists count up to 150 species of flax flax on the ground. They are distributed mainly in the temperate zone. Within our country, 34 species of this plant are found, mainly in the Caucasus. Only an ordinary flaxseed equally “vigorously” feels both in the south and in the north.