Rosemary is an evergreen plant. In Russian its name comes from an ancient verb (dialect) meaning ‘to poison’. Our ancestors also used a cognate adjective meaning ‘poisonous, dopey, astringent’. In the folk epos this plant is known as ‘deadly nightshade’. In times of old people produced an especially strong tobacco from its leaves.
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Wild Rosemary
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You may see this plant in Europe, North America and Asia. In Russia, these shrubs are found in the Arctic prairies and in the forests of the European part, in Siberia and the Far East: in Primorye, Amur basin, on Sakhalin and Kuril islands, in Kamchatka, on Commander Islands and in Chukchi Peninsula. T
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hey grow on moss moors, peat moors and in boggy soft-wood forests. Wild Rosemary shrubs combined with dwarf birches and blueberries create vast and thick vegetation. Anton Chekhov wrote about the impassible shrubs of Wild Rosemary in the notes about his journey to Sakhalin Island:
’…he travels in the dense taiga (boreal forest), sometimes in the knee-high water, sometimes clambering piles of brushwood, sometimes tangling in rough shrubs of Wild Rosemary’.
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Багульник болотный. Источник: ru.wikipedia.org
The shrubs may be one meter high. Most often, their stems are lying, and the branches are lofting. The roots go down 40 centimeters. The leaves of wild Rosemary are dark-green, and the flowers may be white or slightly reddish.
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Wild Rosemary blooms in May-July, and its seeds ripen in July-August. When blooming, the plant emits very strong odor. Its fruits are poisonous: if an animal eats them, it may get poisoned.
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‘Beneath, the slides are covered with earth and grass with such density, that you cannot notice them, but when you climb upwards, the vegetation gradually disappears. In the summer, when the days are hot, Wild Rosemary (Ledum palustre L.) emits such an abundance of essential oils, that it may induce faintness in an unaccustomed person’.
Russian explorer Vladimir Arsenyev wrote about the specific features of Wild Rosemary as a dopey plant in his book Dersu Uzala.
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Due to its acrid odor, Wild Rosemary is often called peppergrass and musquash-poison.
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In the old times, thick leaves of Wild Rosemary were used for tanning and finishing leathers. Today this plant is often used for medical and veterinary purposes, as well as in perfumery, because practically all parts of Wild Rosemary contain essential oils.
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Kuzebay Gerd National Museum of the Republic of Udmurtia
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Wild Rosemary
Dimensions
40x30 cm
Technique
Herbarium
Collection
Exhibition
7
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