Elderberry Juice, Black Tea and Jasmin Oil.

Elderberry
Autumn is on its way, you cannot avoid it. The nights grow colder and the sun is losing some power. Stop your colds and your sneezing. Have some elderberry juice ready. If you'd like to be ahead, before it hits you then pluck a basket, full of the healthy black elderberries and make some juice. Take care it might give extra colour to your kitchen table.
If you cannot find elderberries in your  nearby forest, there is enough elderberry - like bottles with juice and soup in the frost disc - to get in the shops.

Scientific research has shown that elderberry juice can reduce fever, tiredness, headache and relieve sore throats. The elderberry juice is a vitaminbomb with a high content of C-vitamins and flavonoids. which promote the absorption of the vitamins. 

Black Tea
The green tea is the most emphasized tea, when it's about your health, but the black tea has also entered the field. The black tea contains some flavonoids, which Australian scientists have examined for their regulating effect on the blood pressure. The scientists selected a group of 112 women and men, who all had a high blood pressure. Half of the group had to drink three cups black tea daily, the other half had to drink three cups of a drink without flavonoids.

It showed already from the first day that the group, which drank black tea, had reduced their blood pressure. The experiment ran for six months, and the effect stayed all the way. The group, who did not get the black tea, had  unchanged blood pressure.

Source: American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Jasmin Oil
If you suffer from anxiety, or if you have a constant feeling of uneasiness then try to get some etheric Jasmin oil. Just if to stick your nose down in a blooming jasmin makes you feel you'll have to take a deep breath and let the good feeling spread in your body.
The concentrated etheric oil from jasmin shows that it is able to compete with the most common anxiety medicines like barbiturates, benzodiazepines and propofol.

German scientists conclude in Journal of Biological Chemistry that there is scientific evidence to use the etheric oil of jasmin against anxiety, uneasiness and insomnia. A fragrance lamp and a bottle of the etheric jasmin oil can help you. Let the fragrance spread in your room and feel the tranquility!


Source: Magazine Søndag, Nyt om din sundhed, Søndags Sundhedspanel. 2013.
photo 2005/2012 : grethe bachmann nielsen

Bog-Bilberry/Mosebølle
Vaccinium uliginosum

Aqua Mose at Silkeborg , a place with lots of Bog-Bilberry, Bilberry, Cowberry and Cranberry. Furthermore the aromatic Sweet Gale and many other exciting plants.

Bog-bilberry is native to Europe and North America, where it grows on acidic soils on heathland, moorland, tundra and in the understory of coniferous forests. It grows together with i.e. bilberry (Vaccinium myrtillus), heather, sandsedge, Scotch pine and Lingonberry (Cowberry) . Its a small deciduous shrub growing to 10-75 cm tall, rarely 1 m tall with brown stems (unlike the green stems of the closely related Bilberry). The flowers in mid spring are pale pink , and the fruit is a dark blue-black berry with a white flesh, edible but often with an insipid or watery taste.


A berry-picker in Aqua Mose

The Danish name for Bog-bilberry is Mosebølle, but in the old days it had various names referring to it as a dangerous berry. It was not considered fine and valuable as bilberry. But the two berries are easy to confuse. In some regions in Denmark people actually did not distinguish, but in other regions bog-bilberry was considered poisonous and causing headache. In Jutland it was slightingly called Hundebær (dog-berry).

In Jutland, during the 1800s and the beginning of the 1900s bog-bilberry was sold to tourists , dressed as bilberry. At that time the tourists in Jutland mainly came from Copenhagen for their luxurious holidays on the attractive seaside hotels and summer resorts. They were easy to cheat, and bog-bilberry was sold in large amounts at sky-high prices. Even today bog-bilberry is sold in some rural places in North Jutland to unsuspecting tourists, who believe them to be the delicious and healthy bilberry.

Some say it is easy to know bilberry from bog-bilberry; bilberry is delicious, bog-bilberry has an insipid or watery taste. Others say that the taste only separates a trifle. This must be a matter of taste!


Bilberry/Blåbær
stig bachmann nielsen, Naturplan foto


Bog-Bilberry/Mosebølle
stig bachmann nielsen, Naturplan foto

Differences.
Bog-bilberry has brown stems, bilberry has green stems with edges.
Bog-bilberry has often an insipid/watery taste, bilberry has a delicious taste.
Bog-bilberry is faintly poisonous, bilberry is one of the healthiest berries of all.

Bilberry colours your teeth!
The autumn leaves of Bilberry have the prettiest autumn colours in yellow, orange and red.

See Liber Herbarum as to the faintly poisonous bog-bilberry. Maybe you don't get sick by eating a small portion, but moderation in all things!


photo Aqua Mose 1. august 2009: grethe bachmann

Lapland Cornel/Hønsebær
Cornus suecica



Lapland cornel/Hønsebær (Cornus suecica) is a wintergreen herbaceous perennial covering the earth like a carpet. It's blooming in May-July with small purple flowers surrounded by white petal-like bracts. The fruit is a red berry. The plant spreads vigorously in underground suckers.
Lapland cornel is spread cirkumpolar which means that it is found in the northern part of Norway across Lapland, the northern part of Russia and North Sibiria to Alaska, North Canada and Greenland - the whole way around the North Pole.

It is also found in special habitats in Denmark, here in a moor in Rold skov. It grows in moist, acid soil in community with cranberry (tranebær), dward-birch (dværgbirk), bog-bilberry (mosebølle), cloudberry (multebær), rhinantus (skjaller) and Hare's Tail cottongrass (Tue-kæruld).

Observation Denmark Hønsebær

27. June 2009 Rold Skov, North Jutland: grethe bachmann