Bermuda grass is evil,bermuda grass is bug.

Contents

• Basic Botanical Info:Agropyron Repens.
• Plant Description and Habitat:Agropyron Repens.
• Botanical Source and History:Agropyron Repens.
• Agropyron Repens Phytochemical and Constituents:
• Medical Uses and Actions:Agropyron Repens.
• Administration and Application dosage:Agropyron Repens.
• Research Update:Agropyron Repens(Cynodon dactylon,Bermudagrass)

Botanical Source and History:Agropyron Repens.:

This perennial plant has a jointed, long, whitish rhizome, each joint giving off a tuft of fibrous radicles. The flowering spikes surmount the culm, which grows from 2 to 4 feet high. The spikes are from 4 to 8-flowered, and are 3 to 4 inches long. The florets are pointed or obtuse, variable, and generally awnless. It has flat, rough leaves. The plant grows on cultivated grounds and along roadsides, usually in rich soils, and has become a nuisance in some situations. It is a native of Europe, but has become naturalized in this country.

 The name Agropyron is from the Greek agros (field), and puros (wheat).

 On sandy seashores, the grass is often very abundant and assists in binding the sand and preventing the dunes from shifting, its long rhizome answering the purpose nearly as well as those of the Mat and Lyme Grasses.

 Though commonly regarded in this country as a worthless and troublesome weed, its roots are, however, considered on the Continent to be wholesome food for cattle and horses. In Italy, especially, they are carefully gathered by the peasants and sold in the markets. The roots have a sweet taste, somewhat resembling liquorice, and Withering relates that, dried and ground into meal, bread has been made with them in time of scarcity.

 From its long creeping, pointed root-stock, it produces in July several round, hollow flower stems, 2 to 3 feet high, thickened at the joints, bearing five to seven leaves and terminated by long, denselyflowered, two-rowed spikes of flowers, somewhat resembling those of rye or beardless wheat, composed of eight or more oval spikelets on alternate sides of the spike, each containing four to eight florets, the awns, when present, being not more than half the length of the flower. The leaves are flat, with a long, cleft sheath, and are rough on the upper surface, having a row of hairs on each principal vein.

 One of the names of this grass is Dog'sgrass, from its efficacy in relieving dogs when ill. They are often to be seen searching for its rough leaves, which they chew in order to procure vomiting. Culpepper closes his description of the grass by saying: 'If you know it not by this description, watch the dogs when they are sick and they will quickly lead you to it,' and concludes his account of its medicinal virtues with: 'and although a gardener be of another opinion, yet a physician holds half an acre of them to be worth five acres of carrots twice told over.'

 Gerard wrote:

 'Although that Couch-grasse be an unwelcome guest to fields and gardens, yet his physicke virtues do recompense those hurts; for it openeth the stoppings of the liver and reins without any manifest heat.' He says concerning a variety of Couch-grass that -

 'the roots of this grass are knotty and tuberous in early spring, but in summer-time these bulbs lose all shape or form. . . . The learned Societie of London and the Physitions of the Colledge do hold this bulbous Couch grass in temperature agreeing with the common Couch Grass, but in vertues more effectual,' and mentions it as 'growing in the fields next to St. James' Wall, as ye go to Chelsea, and in the fields as ye go from the Tower Hill of London to Radcliffe.'

 Culpepper greatly praises its virtues for diseases of the kidneys.

 The juice of the roots drank freely is recommended by Boerhaave in obstruction of the viscera, particularly in cases of scirrhous liver and jaundice, and it is noteworthy that cattle having scirrhous livers in winter soon get cured when turned out to grass in spring. Sheep and goats eat the leaves as well as cows, horses eat them when young, but leave them untouched when fully grown.

 The ancients were familiar with a grass under the names of Agrostis and Gramen - having a creeping root-stock like the Couchgrass. Dioscorides asserts that its root, taken in the form of decoction is a useful remedy in suppression of urine and stone in the bladder. The same statements are made by Pliny, and are found in the writings of Oribasius and Marcellus Empiricus in the fourth century and of ?tius in the sixth century, and figures of the plant may be found in Dodoens's herbal. The drug is also met with in the German pharmaceutical tariffs of the sixteenth century.

 Formerly the decoction of Couch-grass roots was a popular drink taken to purify the blood in spring. The drug is still a domestic remedy in great repute in France, being taken as a demulcent and sudorific in the form of a tisane. Readers of Trilby will remember Little Billee being dosed with this, as most Parisians have been. The French also use the Cocksfoot-grass (Cynodon Dactylon), which they term Pied-de-poule, in a similar way and for a similar purpose.

Reference:

• 1.Bermuda grass is evil,bermuda grass is bug.

Article Information:

♥The article and literature was edited by herbalist of MDidea Extracts Professional.It runs a range of online descriptions about the titled herb and related phytochemicals,including comprehensive information related,summarized updating discoveries from findings of herbalists and clinical scientists from this field.The electronic data information published at our official website www.mdidea.com and www.mdidea.net,we tried best to update it to latest and exact as possible.
♣ last edit date:Nov 15th 2012 at 14:30