GREEN in BIBLE

Green   Green is the symbol of royalty and eternal life. It is a combination of blue and yellow. A good king has laws and he does his duties in love. And his people keep the law because they are of good character. The blue combines with the gold to produce one harmonious society. We see the green color in at least four places in the Bible, three having to do with happy times spent with the king

.The Feast of TabernaclesThe Throne Of God. And He who was sitting was like a jasper stone and a sardius in appearance; and there was a rainbow around the throne, like an emerald in appearance. (Revelation 4: 3) Both jasper and emerald are green stones. Sardius is red. Jasper can also be red or blue. God is described as sitting on a throne with an emerald (green) rainbow over him. The rainbow was always a covenant symbol. It is the King who makes the covenant to combine the law with love, in our hearts. The covenant says that he will be our God and king and we will be His people. To do that he will write the law in our hearts. He combines the blue and the yellow.Jesus The King. When Christ came to Jerusalem on that last Sunday before his crucifixion, he was greeted as the king with green palm branches.The Feast Of Tabernacles. the feast that celebrates living with God. Now on the first day you shall take for yourselves, the foliage of beautiful trees, palm branches and boughs of leafy trees and willows of the brook, and you shall rejoice before the Lord your God seven days. (Leviticus 23: 40) The feast of tabernacles is adorned with green branches. It is the time when we lived with the king. Green is clearly the symbol of royalty and being in the presence of the king. We are from an ancient royal family. We will continue to reign and rule in the new earth.The People Of God. Revelation 7: 1,3 commands the angel not to hurt the trees. And Revelation 9: 4 suggests that all green things belong to God because those who are not green do not have the seal of God. They were told not to hurt the grass of the earth, nor any green thing, nor any tree, but only the men who do not have the seal of God in their foreheads.Pure Woman

Color Green

Green is the color of nature, fertility, life. Grass green is the most restful color. Green symbolizes self-respect and well being. Green is the color of balance. It also means learning, growth and harmony. Green is a safe color, if you don't know what color to use anywhere use green.
Green is favored by well balanced people. Green symbolizes the master healer and the life force. It often symbolizes money. It was believed green was healing for the eyes. Egyptians wore green eyeliner. Green eyeshades are still used. You should eat raw green foods for good health.

Parthenium allergies

Parthenium or Congress grass is a poisonous, allergic and aggressive weed growing uncontrollably in wastelands, orchards, forestlands, flood plains, agricultural areas, urban areas, overgrazed pastures and along roadsides and railway tracks.

This plant is a native of the Americas. It has now spread across many nations creating a serious global biohazard. In India it was first sighted in Pune in 1956. It is believed to have been imported from the United States along with the wheat that was imported under PL480. By 1972 it had spread all over the country, from Kashmir in the north to Kerala in the south. Director Jay. G. Varshney, Director of the Jabalpur-based Directorate of Weed Science Research (DWSR) estimates that Parthenium has invaded 14.25 million hectares of farm land during 2001-07, seven-fold rise from two million hectares in 1991-2000. He considers Parthenium to be one of the world’s seven most devastating and hazardous weeds. It is probably the most dominant weed in Karnataka State where it infests about 5 million hectares.

Parthenium – Asthma – Precautions to avoid allergy.

Parthenium is prodigious in seed production – a large single plant produces up to 100,000 seeds in its lifecycle. As a result, approximately 340 million seeds can be present in the surface soil in one hectare of land infested with Parthenium. Seeds do not have a dormancy period and are capable of germinating anytime when moisture is available. The seeds are dispersed through water currents, animals and the movement of vehicles, machinery, livestock, grain, stock feed and other produce, and to a lesser extent by the wind. Most of the long distance spread is through vehicles, farm machinery and flooding.

In humans, Parthenium can cause allergy-type responses like hay fever, photo dermatitis, asthma, skin rashes, peeling skin, puffy eyes, swelling and itching of mouth & nose, constant cough, running nose and eczema. Exposure to Parthenium hysterophorous pollen extract leads to bronchospasm in stable patients of bronchial asthma. The parts of the plant responsible for the allergic responses are the pollen grains, airborne pieces of dried plant materials and roots of Parthenium. In the past, dermatitis was found in agricultural labourers but increasing numbers of city dwellers are being affected as the weed spreads into urban areas. In Bangalore, 42.5% of a large population sample showed a sensitivity to the pollen of the plant, contributing to an increase in rates of nasobronchial allergy (“allergenic rhinitis”). An aerobiological survey to study the incidence and concentration of the pollen of Parthenium hysterophorus in Bangalore for a period of one year reported that Parthenium pollen was present in the atmosphere in significant amounts either as single pollen grains or in the form of clumps during the months of June to August.

Parthenium – Asthma – Precautions to avoid allergy.

Humans are not the only species that are affected. The weed also causes dermatitis in animals like cows and goats. When they eat the weed, their milk produced by these animals takes on a bitter taste.

It is also a major threat to biodiversity as this weed quickly colonizes land, leaving very little space for other herbs and plants to grow.

Efforts are being made to control the weed by different methods. Uprooting manually is the finest option. However, it is important to ensure that the person handling the plant wear adequate personal protective attire like a gown, gloves and mask. An alternative option that does not result in significant exposure is mechanical removal using terraforming machines. The best time to conduct a manual or mechanical removal of the plant is during the rainy season. This is because the wet soil leads to ease of removal and concurrently, this happens to be a time in the lifecycle of the plant prior to the onset of flowering. During the last few years much emphasis has been laid on controlling parthenium through various biological agents like insects, pathogens etc.

At the personal level, the following common precautions assist in allergen avoidance:

1. Avoid going outdoors on days when pollen are present in high concentrations in air.
2. Close all windows in evening when pollen generally settles down to minimize their concentration.
3. Air conditioning decreases indoor pollen counts.
4. Take a bath after coming indoors and wear fresh clothes.
5. Eliminate Parthenium in your house garden.
6. Electronic/electrostatic precipitator can be installed

 

Parthenium hysterophorus: Traditional Medicinal Uses

Parthenium hysterophorus L. [syn. Tanacetum parthenium (L.) Sch. Bip.; Chrysanthemum parthenium (L.) Bernh.; Matricaria parthenium L, M. parthenoides Hort., M. carpensis Hort., M. eximia Hort., M. odorata Lam; Pyrethrum parthenium Smith] Compositae, is known as congress weed, carrot weed, star weed, feverfew, white top, chatak chandani, bitter weed, ramphool, garghas. It is believed to have entered India accidentally in the mid 1950s, and is now considered is one of the most feared noxious weed species (Rao 1956). Adverse effects of on humans and on animal health have been well documented. It is known to cause asthma, bronchits, dermatitis, and hay fever in man and livestock. The chemical analysis has indicated that all the plants parts including trichomes and pollen contain toxins called sesquiterpene lactones. The major components of toxic being parthenin and other phenolic acids such as caffeic acid, vanillic acid, ansic acid, p-anisic acid, chlorogenic acid, and parahydroxy benzoic acid are lethal to human beings and animals (Mahadevappa 1997; Oudhia 1998). Despite the fact that Parthenium is considered a toxic plant industrial uses are reported in the literatures (Sastri and Kavathekar 1990). A related species, Parthenium argentatum Gray (guayule) yields rubber which can substitute for Hevea rubber.
The word parthenium is derived from the Latin parthenice suggesting medicinal uses (Bailey 1960). John Lindley (1838) in Flora Medica describes the plant as follows: "The whole plant is bitter and strong-scented, reckoned tonic, stimulating and anti-hysteric. It was once a popular remedy in ague. Its odour is said to be peculiarly disagree to bees and that insects may be easily kept at a distance by carrying a handful of the flower heads." In Homoeopathy system, allergies caused by Parthenium can be treated by a drug prepared from Parthenium. In Finland an infusion of Partenium is used in for consumption.
In the Dictionary of Economic Plants in India Parthenium hysterophourus is described as a weed found in Poona and is reported to be used as tonic, febrifuge, and emmenagogue. Root decoction is useful in dysentery (Singh et al. 1996). Mew et al. (1982) demonstrated that sublethal doses of parthenin exhibited antitumor activity in mice and that the drug could either cure mice completely or increase their survival time after they had been injected with cancer cells. Parthenium is also reported as promising remedy against hepatic amoebiasis (Sharma and Bhutani,1988). South American Indian uses a decoction of roots to cure amoebic dysentery (Uphof 1959) whereas parthenin, a toxin of Parthenium, is found pharmacologically active against neuralgia and certain types of rheumatism). In Compendium of Indian Medicinal Plants by Rastogi and Mehrotra (1991) parthenin induced dose-dependent damage to human leucocyte chromosomes in vitro and micronuclei formation in polychromatic erythrocytes of mice is reported (Dominguez and Sierra, 1970).
Parthenium is used as folk remedy in the Caribbean and Central America (Nabie et al. 1996). It is applied externally on skin disorders and decoction of the plant is often taken internally as a remedy for a wide variety of ailments (Dominguez and Sierra 1970; Morton 1981). In Jamaica the decoction is used as a flea-repellent both for dogs and other animals (Morton 1981).

Health benefits of P. hysterophorus

The decoction of P. hysterophorus has been used in traditional medicine to treat fever, diarrhoea, neurologic disorders, urinary tract infections, dysentery, malaria and as emmenagogue (Surib-Fakim et al. 1996). Ethnobotanically, it is used by some tribes as remedy for inflammation, eczema, skin rashes, herpes, rheumatic pain, cold, heart trouble and gynaecological ailments. Parthenium hysterophorus has been found to be pharmacologically active as analgesic in muscular rheumatism, therapeutic for neuralgia and as vermifuge (Maishi et al. 1998). This weed is also reported as promising remedy against hepatic amoebiasis. Parthenin, the major constituent of the plant, exhibits significant medicinal attributes including anticancer property (Venkataiah et al. 2003). The methanol extract of the flowers showed significant antitumour activity and parthenin exhibited cytotoxic properties against T cell leukaemia, HL-60 and Hela cancer cell lines (Das et al. 2007). Previously, Ramos et al. (2002) had established the antitumour potential of P. hysterophorus extracts in vitro and in vivo with positive results in terms of tumour size reduction and overall survival of cell lines. Aqueous extract of P. hysterophorus has hypoglycaemic activity against alloxan-induced diabetic rats (Patel et al. 2008). So, flower extract of this weed can be used for developing drug for diabetes mellitus.

Parashar et al. (2009) reported the synthesis of silver nanoparticles by reducing silver ions present in the aqueous solution of silver nitrate complex using the extract of P. hysterophorus. This discovery can promote this noxious plant into a valuable weed for nanotechnology-based industries in future. Applications of such eco-friendly nanoparticles in bactericidal, wound healing and other medical and electronic applications makes this method potentially exciting for the large-scale synthesis of other nanomaterials.

Biological control of P. hysterophorus weeds

Dhileepan (2003a, b) studied the effectiveness of leaf-feeding beetle Zygogramma bicolorata (Fig. 3), stem-galling moth Epiblema strenuana and stem-boring weevil Listronotus setosipennis introduced against P. hysterophorus in Australia. The moth Carmenta ithacae and leaf-rust Puccinia melampodi were released to eliminate this weed, but little success has been attained in this regard as the weed has great regenerative potential and moreover the insect consumes only the foliage of the weed which stimulates further leafy proliferation (Dhileepan and Strathie 2009). The flowers and seeds, which are the main source of its dissemination, remain unaffected.

 

Eucalyptus, a native of Australia, is a known allelopathic tree that exerts its toxicity through leachates and volatile terpenes on adjoining vegetation/agricultural crops. The volatile terpenes present in leaves of eucalyptus emanate in the form of vapours into the surroundings. The vapours get adsorbed to soil, curbing the seed germination and reducing the chlorophyll content as well as cellular respiration. The oil vapours increase water loss leading to wilting. Eucalyptus oils may be used as natural herbicides for the biocontrol of P. hysterophorus owing to its allelochemicals (Kohli et al. 1998). Cassia sericea has the ability to overgrow P. hysterophorus in North-East India. Also marigold (Tagetes erecta) is reported to suppress P. hysterophorus growth in field trials (Lakshmi and Srinivas 2007).The control agents for the weed P. hysterophorus

Disposal and eradication of P. hysterophorus weeds

Parthenium hysterophorus has multiple harmful aspects and no particular use. Its eradication is a major challenge to government, primarily because of its epidemic proliferation and strong reproductive potential, apart from its wide ecological range. Several physical and chemical methods used in the past to eliminate this weed have proved ineffective, expensive and not eco-friendly. The biomass of this plant is not put to any use and disposed along the roadsides, agricultural fields and railway tracks after uprooting. Further, these weeds are burnt in order to prevent various ailments induced by its toxic sesquiterpene lactone. However, burning of P. hysterophorus residues is not a recommended practice as it deteriorates the soil quality by rendering it more alkaline and deficient in organic matter (Singh et al. 2003). Tamado and Milberg (2004) conducted experiments to compare the effect of hand hoeing and applying herbicide (2,4-D) on growth of this weed and its effect on yield of sorghum in small holder farming systems in Ethiopia. Hoeing proved to be more efficient than the use of chemical herbicide.