Астрагал (Astragalus)

GAME and QUIZ:
http://ruskyed.com/PLANTS/index.html
(Lesson 03)


TRANSCRIPT:
Rusky Ed here with a lesson about a plant often referred to as locoweed. More on that following the intro song, but in the meantime acquaint yourself with the vocabulary words for this lesson!

[SONG/VOCAB]

The proper name of this plant is astragalus or Астрагал in Russian. Common names used for the plant are locoweed and milkvetch or молочница in Russian. The Red Book, or Красная Книга in Russian, lists ten species as follows:

АРИЙСКИЙ - was discovered in Tajikistan and people of that region are considered descendants of Persians, also known as Iranians, also known as Aryans in the original sense of the term and hence the species name for this plant.

БАКИНСКИЙ - probably is a reference to Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan.

БОБРОВА - Although this sounds like it might have something to do with beavers since the Russian word for beaver is бобр, it is most likely the case that this species was named in honor of a Russian botanist named Bobrov.

БЕЛОВОЙЛОЧНЫЙ - means something like white felt.

КУНГУРСКИЙ - is named after a town in the Ural Mountains.

ОЛЬХОНСКИЙ - refers to Olkhon Island, the largest island in Lake Baikal

СТРАННЫЙ - means strange, but the Latin species name for this plant is paradoxus and so maybe this plant is considered somewhat of a paradox.

КРАСНОВАТЫЙ - meaning reddish or somewhat red from the Latin species name rubellus.

РУБЦОВА - named in honor of a Russian geo-botanist by the name of Nikolai Roobt-sov.

And finally we have:

ЩЕТИНИСТЫЙ - which means rough or bristly.

In the last lesson we discussed five categories of information supplied for the entries in the Red Book and here we will list six more for a total of eleven. The last six categories are as follows:

6) Численность и тенденция её изменения (Number and tendency of its change)
7) Основные лимитирующие факторы (Main limiting factors)
8) Особенности биологии (Biological features)
9) Культивирование (Cultivation)
10) Принятые меры охраны (Security measures taken or What has been done to protect the plant)
11) Необходимые меры охраны (Required security measures)

Astragalus is a member of the Pea Family or Бобовые in Russian and Бобовый is the Russian word for bean or legume, which makes perfect sense and speaking of sense, here’s a pithy observation to close out this lesson:

Здравый смысл – это цветок, который растёт не в саду каждого.
(Common sense is a flower which does not grow in everyone’s garden.)

And that’s it for this lesson….

pages 175-180

VOCABULARY:
бобр (beaver)
белый (white)
молочный (milk)
красноватый (reddish)
щетинистый (bristly)
численность (quantity)
особенность (feature)
принятый (adopted)
необходимый (necessary)
бобовый (bean)
здравый (reasonable)
который (which)



INTERESTING FACTOID: A purported telomerase activator known as cycloastragenol and sold in a product called TA-65 is an extract of various species of Astragalus.