Mexican poppy - Argemone Mexicana

Common Name :	Mexican prickly poppy, Mexican poppy, Cardosanto.
Botanical Name :	Argemone Mexicana
Family :	Papaveraceae
Bengali Name :	Sheyal kata (শেয়াল কাঁটা, শেয়াল কাটা).
Photo Taken :	Bangladesh

Botanical name of the weed plant is Argemone Mexicana. This belongs to the plant family Papaveraceae. Common names of the flower are Mexican poppy, Mexican prickly poppy, flowering thistle, cardosanto, etc. It's easily understandable from the name that this flower is endemic to Mexico. But it is widely available around Africa, India, America now a days. In Bangladesh the plant is known as Sheyal kata.



Mexican poppy (Argemone Mexicana) is an annual which can grow up to three meter in height. The plant's leafs are thistle like with plenty of thorns. This flower is a species of Poppy and used to be considered as mildly poisonous. Breaking the plant produces a sap that causes inflammation to skin (itchy too).



Mexican poppy (Argemone Mexicana) flower is having bright yellow petals (possibly six). Most parts of the flower are yellow in color except the tip of the style, which is maroon in color. The seeds inside the fruits are almost similar to the mustard seed. People can easily mix these with mustard seeds. Since the seeds are poisonous, the extracted oil of contaminated mustard becomes poisonous too.



This plant grows in a cluster. And along with being poisonous no grazing animals touch them. That's why they often grows in a cluster. This plant is considered as a weed (more specifically crop weed).

Seeds of Mexican poppy (Argemone Mexicana) which resembles mustard seed

The photos Mexican poppy (Argemone Mexicana) were taken from the following location:
1. May 2010: Dinajpur, Bangladesh.

This article has written by Lonely Traveler,
for the blog http://icflora.blogspot.com/