Skip to main content

Kuppameniya

 

By - Amal Udawatta,


English Name, Indian Acalypha, Indian Mercury, Indian Copperleaf, Indian Nettle, Sinhala Name -  Kuppameniya; Tamil Name – Kuppaimeni; Sanskrit Name- Arittamanjariye

Scientific Name- Acalypha indica

An annual herb 30 -75 cm tall, erect branches numerous , long ascending , angular, leaves.3.7- 7 cm long. 2.8 -7 cm broad. Flowers minute, green  unisexual. Male flowers are very small, white in color, short pedicelled in cluster. Female flowers are solitary or in clusters of 2 or 3 scattered.

Habitat

It grows in disturbed places such as waste lands, road sides, crevices in walls. It also grows in rocky hillsides, forest edges and river banks. It prefers moist and shaded places. It grows from sea-level up to 1350 m altitude.

Kuppameniya occurs widely throughout the Old World tropics. In Africa. It also occurs in   the hotter parts of Sri Lanka.

Traditional medicine

This plant is held in high esteem in traditional Siddha,   Ayurveda and Indigenous medicines as it is believed to rejuvenate the body. The plant has many traditional medicinal uses, In Madagascar, the crushed plant is used for skin parasites. In Mauritius, the sap of crushed leaves mixed with salt, or a decoction of plant, is used for scabies and other skin problems.

The root decoction is also taken for intestinal worms and stomach ache. The leaf sap is taken as an emetic. An infusion together with the roots of Kuppameniya is taken in Réunion as an emetic in the case of poisoning. A leaf infusion is also taken as a purgative and vermifuge in Réunion and Madagascar. In East Africa sap of the leaves is used for eye infections. Leaf powder is used for maggot-infested wounds. Kuppameniya is listed in the Pharmacopoeia of India as an expectorant to treat asthma and pneumonia.

The plant has also been eaten as a vegetable in Africa , India and some parts of Sri Lanka, but care needs when eating it since it contains several alkaloids as well as hydrocyanic acid


Cat plays

Throughout the area where the plant grows, it is widely known for its effect on domestic cats, which react very strongly and favorably to the root of the plant. The chemicals that attract cats are the iridoid compounds isodihydronepetalactone and 

isoiridomyrmecin.

 Referrences

1 )Madicinal Plants used in Ceylon – Jayaweera          D.M.A Dr.- Part 02- page 189- 190

02) Acalypha indica L. Indian Acalypha, on India Biodiversity Portal. Accessed 31.07.2017

 

 


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why did Homo sapiens outlast all other human species?

  From - Live Science By  Mindy Weisberger Edited by - Amal Udawatta Reproductions of skulls from a Neanderthal (left), Homo sapiens (middle) and Australopithecus afarensis (right)   (Image credit: WHPics, Paul Campbell, and Attie Gerber via Getty Images; collage by Marilyn Perkins) Modern humans ( Homo sapiens ) are the sole surviving representatives of the  human family tree , but we're the last sentence in an evolutionary story that began approximately 6 million years ago and spawned at least 18 species known collectively as hominins.  There were at least nine  Homo  species — including  H. sapiens  —  distributed around Africa, Europe and Asia by about 300,000 years ago, according to the Smithsonian's  National Museum of Nat ural History  in Washington, D.C. One by one, all except  H. sapiens  disappeared.  Neanderthals  and a  Homo  group known as the  Denisovans  lived alongside...
Post a Comment
Read more

New Comet SWAN Now Visible in Small Scopes

     From :- Sky & Telescope  By :- Bob King  Edited by :- Amal Udawatta This spectacular image of Comet SWAN (C/2025 F2) was taken on April 6th and shows a bright, condensed coma 5′ across and dual ion tails. The longer one extends for 2° in PA 298° and the other 30′ in PA 303°. Details: 11"/ 2.2 RASA and QHY600 camera. Michael Jaeger Amateur astronomers have done it again — discovered a comet. Not by looking through a telescope but through close study of  publicly released, low-resolution images  taken by the  Solar Wind Anisotropies  (SWAN) camera on the orbiting  Solar and Heliospheric Observatory  (SOHO). On March 29th, Vladimir Bezugly of Ukraine was the first to report a moving object in SWAN photos taken the week prior. Michael Mattiazzo of Victoria, Australia, independently found "a pretty obvious comet" the same day using the same images, noting that the object was about 11th magnitude and appeared to be brightening. R...
Post a Comment
Read more

Who Was the Real Marilyn Monroe?

  From - Smithsonian Magazine, By -  Grant Wong Historian, University of South Carolina, Edited by - Vinuri Randhula  Silva, “Blonde,” a heavily fictionalized film by Andrew Dominik, explores the star’s life and legend in a narrative that’s equal parts glamorous and disturbing Marilyn Monroe’s  final interview  is a heartbreaker. Published in  Life  magazine on August 3, 1962—just a day before the  actress died  of a barbiturate overdose at age 36—it found Monroe reflecting on her celebrity status, alternatively thoughtful, frank and witty. “When you’re famous you kind of run into human nature in a raw kind of way,” she observed. “It stirs up envy, fame does. People you run into feel that, well, who is she—who is she, who does she think she is, Marilyn Monroe?” That same question—who was the real Monroe?—has sparked debate among  cinema scholars ,  cultural critics ,  historians ,  novelists ,  filmmakers  and th...
Post a Comment
Read more