Tagetes Minuta Research Articles

Control of problem weeds of maize on the Transvaal Highveld (South Africa). I. Tagetes minuta L.

Summary:A number of herbicides and herbicide mixtures which are being used for the post‐emergence control of weeds in maize on the Transvaal Highveld, have been tested for their efficiency in the control of problem weeds. The evaluation was done under standardized conditions. The influence of the herbicides on the plants was evaluated by using the following bioassay methods: percentage mortality and the percentage dry mass difference between the test plants and the control 10 days after treatment.Recommendations are made as to which herbicides could be used most effectively on problem weeds post‐emergence in maize fields. The developmental stage (age) at which each herbicide is most effective, has been determined.

Contact Dermatitis From Tagetes minuta

Tagetes minuta (Mexican marigold), a common weed in south eastern Africa and subtropical America has a vesicant primary irritant effect on intact skin and can cause severe and prolonged allergic contact dermatitis, with cross-sensitization to other Compositae plants. This is demonstrated with patch tests using fresh plants and with diluted extracts in three sensitive patients and in 43 controls. Tagetes minuta also has several other noxious effects on mammals and insects. Its action on human skin, including sensitization, is similar to that of the closely related genus Helenium .

Medicinal plants of the Mt. Hagen people (Mbowamb) in New Guinea

With the spread of civilization during the last century, a Neo-melanese 'pidgin-language' developed which gradually displaced and replaced, from the coast inward, the original dialects. Unfortunately, with the loss of the original language, there also came about a loss of the aboriginal treasures of medicinal knowledge, this condition being further aggravated by increasingly abundant coastal migration with consequent disintegration of tribal communities harboring such knowledge. Of what there is left, the knowledge and use of plants yielding essential oils, mucilages and tannins appear to have best resisted disintegration. It must be added., though, that many of these plants are well known in other parts of the world, and their medical usefulnes is equally well recognized, e.g. Ocimum sp., Tagetes minuta, Triumfetta, Rhizophora, etc.