What's so special about Edelweiss?

Morphological characteristics of Edelweiss

Edelweiss is a perennial herb with a height of 15-45cm. The underground stem is stout, surrounded by short leaf sheaths, with many clustered flower stems and roots with the same shape as the flower stem, and no rosette leaf clusters. Flowering stems erect, thin, gray-white villous or white subsilky hairs, unbranched or sometimes corymbose or subracemose branches in the upper part, more necessary in the lower part, sparse leaves in the upper part, 5-20mm long internodes, and sometimes 10cm in the upper part. Leaves erect, striate or striate-lanceolate, 2-4.5cm long, 0.2-0.5cm wide, without sheath, sessile, gray-green above, pilose, white or grayish-white densely woolly or sometimes sericeous below. Bracts few, slightly shorter than upper leaves, oblong or strip-shaped, covered with white or gray-white thick velutinous hairs on both surfaces or below, spreading into bract groups in male plants, erect in female plants, not arranged into obvious bract groups. Heads large, female plants 7-10 mm in diameter, 3-7 dense, sparse 1 or more, often with longer peduncles arranged in corymbals; involucral bracts hemispherical, 4-6mm long, covered with white woolly; involucral bracts ca. 4 layers, often narrowly pointed, slightly exposed above pilose; florets dioecious, sparsely monoecious; male Corolla ca. 3.5mm, narrowly funnel-shaped, lobulate. Female Corolla filiform, growing after anthesis, 4.5-5mm long; crown hairs white, ca. 4mm; male Corolla hairs serrate or hairlike teeth; female Corolla hairs denticulate; ovary glabrous with papillae. Achene oblong, yellowish brown, ca. 1mm, with papillary protuberances or densely hirsute. The flowering and fruiting period is from July to October.

The functional value of Edelweiss

Ornamental value. Edelweiss is a precious flower. She has the characteristics of beautiful flowers and leaves, small and exquisite plant shape, silver-gray leaves, white inflorescences such as snow, simple and generous. At the same time, it has the advantages of drought tolerance and barren tolerance, and it is also a perennial herb, so it is especially suitable for planting in rock garden or pot ornamental.

Medicinal value. Edelweiss is famous for its unique medicinal value, cold nature and slightly bitter taste. It has the effect of clearing heat and cooling blood, tonifying kidney and diuresis, mainly for acute and chronic glomerulonephritis, hematuria, and effective for disappearing proteinuria and hematuria. Folk prescription is used to treat glomerulonephritis edema, and the effect is remarkable.

Cosmetic effect. Edelweiss is now more widely used in the field of beauty. Edelweiss is cold, and its essence is rich in minerals, which can clear heat and cool blood, soothe, calm, whiten and nourish the skin, and has an excellent effect on resisting skin aging. it is a natural beauty holy product for local women in Switzerland. In addition, with the research and extraction of Edelweiss ingredients in various countries, researchers found that Edelweiss also has a strong detoxification and acne-eliminating effect on the skin.

Edelweiss varieties from local origin

Edelweiss is native to the high elevations of Europe. It is one of the famous alpine flowers, known as the famous flower of the Alps. Edelweiss has about 40 species, distributed in the Alps of Asia and Europe. This flower, which usually grows above 1700 meters above sea level in the Alps, is extremely rare because it grows only on very rare rocky surfaces.

In Yuxian County, Hebei Province, which is known as the "aerial prairie" in China, this kind of grass is called "Edelweiss" locally. Because this grass has a special taste, when it is fed to the animals, the animals are disgusted and refuse to eat it. And before knowing that it is a precious Edelweiss, most tourists to the "aerial grassland" will not pick this kind of flower, because its appearance is not gorgeous, let alone fragrant. After the local government learned that the flower was Edelweiss, it took protective measures to ban grazing, and the yurts originally built on the prairie were also withdrawn. It is also from the discovery of Edelweiss, the number of tourists to the "sky prairie" has greatly increased. With the fame brought by Edelweiss, in addition to the "hometown of paper-cut", Yuxian has another name-- "the hometown of Edelweiss."