In India this weed is normally called as congress plant but it has many other names like Santa-Maria, carrot grass..,
Binomial name for this plant is: “Parthenium hysterophorus”
As we all heard about this plant is it grows drastically all over the empty places and it affects lot to the farmers by growing among crops as weed. The framers normally used to clear the weeds where it is also one thing among them but clearing with hands causes scratches, allergy and respiratory like problems such a dangerous plant it is.
Do you know the introduction of this plant to India, it has its own history as India was running a drought for 4 years and was forced to buy any kind of grain. At that time Indian Government decides to import a wheat seeds from USA there it took its entry to India through wheat seeds as contaminated seed. This happened in the year 1950's.
all ok, but why the name congress plant, have you ever think about that?
Here is the reason for this name, as this weed enters India when there is Congress government, and the flowers at the edge of this plant which is white in color looks like the congress party peoples with white cap on their head. The bunches of white flowers look exactly as they compared. Take a look of that picture.
The decoction of congress plant has been used in traditional medicine to treat fever, diarrhea, neurologic disorders, urinary tract infections, malaria. Ethnobotanically, it is used by some tribes as remedy for inflammation, skin rashes.
As it is tough to remove weed by hand it may help to farmers to clear weeds in their crops just add common salt of 20% to the water and spread over on it, this is easiest technique to clear this congress weed in a crop or near your houses.
some methods to control parthenium:
This is about the congress plant alias parthenium, we seen this in many regions and it takes dominancy in empty crop land but we just seen and think that even this is also one of the waste plant but we never expect such reason or history behind this waste weed. This plant story creates some curiosity in us yet how many plants have such background like this, right? yes, but even I don't know whether this type of story may have with any other plant. Do research on it and make a article if anybody have interest.
Thank you!
