Tridax procumbens Health Dictionary

Linn.

Family: Asteraceae; Compositae.

Habitat: Waste places, road sides and hedges throughout India.

English: Mexican Daisy.

Ayurvedic: Jayanti (doubtful synonym).

Siddha/Tamil: Vettukkaaya-thalai.

Folk: Akala Kohadi (Bihar).

Action: Leaves—styptic, antidiar- rhoeal, antidysenteric. Also used for bronchial catarrh.

The leaf juice exhibits antiseptic, insecticidal and parasiticidal properties. It is used to check haemorrhage from wounds, cuts and bruises, also for restoring hair growth.

An aqueous extract of the plant produced reflex tachycardia and showed a transient hypotensive effect on normal blood pressure of dogs; it had also showed a marked depressant action on the respiration.

Alcoholic extract of the whole plant (excluding roots) at a dose of 300 mg showed good anti-secretory antidiar- rhoeal activity against E. coli enterotox- in-induced secretory response in rabbit and guinea-pig ileal loop models. Alcoholic extract of aerial parts also showed hepatoprotective action against acute hepatitis induced by CCl4 in albino rats.

The leaves contain fumaric acid. The plant gave n-alkanes, saturated and unsaturated fatty acids along with dotria- contanol, beta-amyrin, beta-amyrone, lupeol, fucosterol and beta-sitosterol. Flowers contain glucoluteolin, iso- quercetin and quercetin. Presence of lauric, myristic, palmitic, stearic, arachidic, behenic, palmitoleic, linole- ic and linolenic acid is reported in aerial parts except flower tops. cine, is used as Ispast. The seeds contain xanthosin.