Łódź, Stawy Jana pond

Native to Europe and introduced into the United States late in the 19th century. Flowers can be white or rose as well as blue. Edible plant - leaves raw or cooked, bitter in taste; roots dried and roasted serve as coffee substitute; leaves raw or cooked like parsnip; flowers raw (in salads). Herbal plant - roots and leaves are appetizer, cholagogue, depurative, digestive, diuretic, hypoglycaemic, laxative and tonic; the roots extracts have experimentally produced a slower and weaker heart rate (pulse); the latex in the stems is applied to warts in order to destroy them. Usable plant - a blue dye has been obtained from the leaves; the roots contain inulin which is a polymer of fructose molecules with an end glucose molecule and can be used for the production of fructose syrups.