Calendula is a compact herbaceous plant with bright flowers that look like small sunny disks. It belongs to the Astrov family. The plant lives in the Mediterranean and Southwest Asia, from where it spread throughout the planet. Calendula is known to many as marigolds. It is very popular in folk and official medicine, because it has many useful properties. It is also used as a garden ornamental plant. Long flowering and pleasant tart aroma are a significant advantage. Moreover, gardeners prefer decorative terry varieties of calendula, which turn into a dense golden carpet.
Botanical characteristics
Among calendula annual and perennial plants are found. They have a pivotal rhizome and an upright, slightly branched stalk 15-75 cm high. On the surface of the dark green shoot there are hard glandular villi that make it sticky to the touch.
Whole consecutive leaves have a saturated green color and obovate or oval shape. Closer to the base, the leaf narrows and forms a short petiole. Its edge is rounded.
Already in early June, single inflorescences in the form of a basket appear on the tops of the stems. Their diameter is 4-7 cm. A wrapper of 1-2 rows of female reed flowers with flat petals is located along the edge. A distinctive feature is that it is in them that the fruits are tied. Although the central tubular flowers are bisexual, they are completely sterile. In the color of inflorescences, yellow and orange colors prevail. With proper care, flowering continues until the onset of autumn cold. It is accompanied by an intense aroma.
Pollination occurs with the help of insects, after which the fruits ripen within a month. Seed boxes are arranged in several rows in the form of a ring around the perimeter of the inflorescence. Crescent-shaped rounded seeds have a ribbed surface and a brownish color.
Types and varieties of calendula
In total, there are up to 20 plant species in the calendula genus, but only two of them are used in culture.
Calendula field. This variety is often used for decorative rather than medicinal purposes. Grassy annuals 10-30 cm tall are weakly branched. The stems with glandular pubescence are covered with rare obovate leaves. In May-June, larger simple baskets with a diameter of 7-9 cm open. The core of the inflorescence is bright yellow, and the petals are gray-yellow. Fruits in the form of wrinkled arcuate seeds with a prickly swollen surface ripen in July.
Calendula officinalis. The annual grows an erect, almost unbranched stem up to 75 cm in height. It is thick enough, ribbed. A sticky pile is visible on a light green surface. Another light green foliage of an oval or obovate shape expands to the edge. A bright orange inflorescence with narrower petals in diameter is 5-6 cm. Achenes differ in shape and degree of bending. Based on this species, breeders have developed decorative varieties. Terry calendula is especially popular. The most interesting of the varieties:
- Radio - branched shoots 35-45 cm tall covered with oval leaves with a network of embossed veins, terry hemispherical inflorescences 6-7 cm wide have a bright orange color;
- Yuvel - a branchy bush of 40-50 cm in diameter grows broad light green leaves and blossoms semi-double orange baskets with a diameter of 5-8 cm;
- Bonbon - a bush up to 30 cm tall blooms densely terracotta inflorescences with a diameter of 8 cm;
- The Indian prince - shoots 75 cm high end with terry orange baskets with a bronze core and burgundy petals cut along the edge.
Flower propagation
Calendula is grown from seeds, because almost all cultivars are annuals. They can be sown immediately in open ground or pre-grown seedlings. Seedling method requires a bit of great effort, but allows you to get flowering plants earlier. Most often, this method is used for low decorative varieties.
In late March or early April, the seeds are distributed without preliminary preparation into separate peat cups or containers with a special soil mixture for flowering plants. 1-2 cm of earth is poured on top. Plantings are sprayed with warm water and covered with a film. The greenhouse is kept in a shaded place with a temperature of + 18 ... + 20 ° C. After a week, when the shoots appear, the film is removed and the container is transferred to a cooler (not higher than + 14 ... + 15 ° C) place. Seedlings should be kept in ambient light and regularly watered. Twice or thrice a month, they are fed with a highly diluted mineral complex. Seedlings with two real leaves dive in separate containers or in drawers with a distance of 5 cm.
To avoid unnecessary difficulties, crops can be done immediately in open ground. Suitable time for this: October or April. 10-15 days before planting, the site should be dug up and humus added, as well as mineral fertilizer (potassium chloride, superphosphate, urea). Seeds are distributed into the wells with a depth of 1-2 cm. The row spacing should be 60-70 cm. When the earth warms up, seedlings will begin to appear. The grown calendula is thinned so that the distance between plants is 25-30 cm. If planting is necessary to collect medicinal raw materials, then the distance can be halved.
Regardless of the method of planting, calendula flowering occurs 2.5 months after emergence.
Landing and care
Pre-grown seedlings are moved to the open ground in the second decade of May, when 5-6 leaves appear on the plants. A few days before the planned event should be hardened, leaving flower pots during the daylight hours on the street. Calendula is quite cold-resistant, it is able to tolerate rare night frosts.
The landing site should be open and sunny, and the soil fertile, moist and loose. Due to the intense aroma, calendula scares away pests, so it is often planted in the garden between the beds with vegetable crops.
Caring for plants is very easy. It is recommended that the flowerbed be regularly watered and loosened so that a crust does not form on the surface of the soil, preventing air from reaching the roots. On hot days, plants are watered quite abundantly, but so that the water does not stagnate at the roots for a long time.
For proper development, calendula needs top dressing. Each month, plants are fed ammophos or nitrophos. It is important not to exceed the indicated dosage, because an excess of nitrogen in the soil makes the inflorescences pale and less expressive.
There is a small trick that allows you to make flowering more plentiful and long. To do this, fully open corollas should be cut off, without waiting until they fade themselves. As a result, a large number of new buds will form. By repeating this procedure regularly, it will be possible to extend flowering to autumn frosts. Otherwise, it will end in a month.
Ornamental garden varieties are annuals, so it makes no sense to keep them in the winter. In autumn, the vegetation is completely torn out and the site is dug up. Seeds spill out of the nests before ripening. If you do not tear off the heads in a timely manner, you need to be prepared for abundant self-seeding next year.
Calendula suffers infrequently from diseases and pests. Only with constant dampness does powdery mildew and black spotting develop on it. Fighting diseases is quite difficult, fungicides (Topaz, Topsin and others) will come to the rescue. Prevention of fungus is the timely thinning of thickets. The pungent smell of flowers scares off insects, so almost no one settles on the plant. The exception is aphids. If this parasite is on the site, then first of all it is found on the calendula. Chemical agents will come to the aid of the grower (Karbofos, Actellik, Antitlin).
Composition and medicinal properties
The use of calendula is so great that it planted entire plantations for industrial gathering. As a medicinal raw material, barely full baskets are used. They contain a large number of flavonoids, tannins, phytoncides, fatty oils, alkaloids, essential oils, carotene, bitterness.
Dried flowers can be stored for up to two years. They are used for the preparation of alcohol and water tinctures, decoctions, oils, ointments. Calendula has the following indications for use:
- hypertension;
- heart failure;
- stomach ulcer;
- gastritis;
- cholelithiasis;
- cholecystitis;
- erosion of the uterus;
- trichomoniasis;
- angina;
- inflammation on the skin and purulent wounds;
- asthma;
- nephritis;
- stomatitis.
Calendula was especially fond of women. She cares for reproductive health, eliminating inflammation and infections of the genitals, as well as preventing miscarriage and the development of toxicosis during pregnancy. In addition, the plant takes care of the beauty of the ladies. It is enough to regularly wipe the skin with alcohol tincture to get rid of acne, inflammation and bruises. Rinsing hair with a decoction of herbs with calendula, hops and chamomile, you can improve their condition and give intense shine.
Contraindications to taking calendula can be a tendency to hypotension, bradycardia and allergic reactions.
Garden use
Solar nails in the landscape are used to decorate a flower bed in a natural or rustic style, a rabatka, a mixborder, as well as to decorate balconies and terraces, like a potted plant. Low varieties are used in group tape or carpet plantings of the last of the lawn, and high ones will become an excellent background in the middle or background of the flowerbed. Bright golden-orange flowers are recommended to be combined with white, blue or purple. Together with calendula, an ageratum, zinnia, cornflowers, eshsoltsia and rudbekia are usually planted. There can be many variations, the main thing is to correctly draw up a flowering calendar so that the flower garden throughout the summer delights with bright colors.
