Chamomile is a generic name that refer to many herbs, it mainly denotes the so called ‘true chamomile’, common chamomile or German chamomile, Matricaria recutita.
Chamomile is famous for soothing all kinds of digestive upsets, especially those related to stress such as nervous indigestion, heartburn and acidity, and for digestive infections such as gastroenteritis.The plant itself contains a wide variety of essential oil components, flavonoids, sesquiterpene, lactones and coumarins.
Essential oil content was measured as 0.25 percent dry weight of the flowers, with a specific gravity of 0.923.
Chamomile is an annual plant found would along roadside, in fields, and cultivated in gardens. The round, downy, hollow, furrowed stem may be procumbent or rose upright to a height of sixteen inches.
The leaves are fernlike short and pale green. It has daisy-like flowers which appear May through October.
German chamomile can be seeded in either the fall or spring. Planting it in the fall helps because viability is increased when the seeds are subjected to freezing and thawing.
Once established, the German chamomile plant will reseed itself if some flower heads are allowed to remain unharvested.
German Chamomile (Matricaria recutita)
