Researchers at
the Jawaharlal Nehru Tropical Botanic Garden and Research Institute has
discovered an elusive plant - Ophiorrhiza barnesii, which was thought to
be ‘possibly extinct’ since its first discovery, from Kallar Valley in Idukki
district of the Southernmost Indian state of Kerala. According to a journal
article about the discovery published in the latest issue of the Journal of
Threatened Taxa, the plant was last reported 75 years ago, in 1937 by British botanists.
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Ophiorrhiza barnesii, a rare plant
rediscovered from Southern Western Ghats |
According to
sources, the researchers accidentally zeroed in on the plant while making a collection
of threatened plants of Southern Western Ghats for ex situ conservation. The
discovery now throws light into the still to be explored floral richness of
Western Ghats, which is one of the eight hottest hot-spots in the world. The plant is one among the 20 members of the Ophiorrhiza
genus found in the state of Kerala.
‘Possibly Extinct’
It was in 1939, that the plant was first
described by a British botanist C E C Fischer based on two collections made by
another British Botanist Prof. Edward Barnes. Both of the two specimens were
collected from Kallar Valley during 1937. However, the plant has remained
elusive since then with no further collectors or researchers reporting the
plant from any other part of the state. According to researchers, subsequent
botanical explorations even considered the chances that the plant may be possibly
extinct by this time.
However, the rediscovery now puts it in the
class of the rarest plants found in the Southern Western Ghats. To confirm the
authenticity of the claim, the researchers reportedly compared the present
specimen collected form Kallar Valley with the specimens in the earlier
collections preserved at Royal botanic Gardens, Kew in London.
The Elusive plant
of Western Ghats
The elusive plant is just like any other
casual plant you may find in the Western Ghats with its perennial erect herb
nature. Usually found as part of the under growth in the evergreen forests of
the Western Ghats at an altitude of 1200 to 1600 meters from the mean sea level,
the plant bears small white flowers. The flowering and fruiting season of the
plant falls in the September to December period.
According to researchers, the plant is also
found along the banks of the streams in the forests. It is found “usually
associated with Sonerila wallichii, Ophiorrhiza roxburghiana, O.
barberi, Elatostemma sp., etc”, says the research article.
However, with the rediscovery, researchers are
raising doubts about the identity of another rare plant of the same genus found
in Western Ghats - Ophiorrhiza falcate. Described by British naturalist Beddome in 1861 from the Anamalais, the plant resembles O. barnesii, in its
description.
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| Flowers of Ophiorrhiza barnesii |
However, rigorous searchers in the specimen
collections in the foreign herbariums where the collections from pre-independent
India are kept failed to trace back the original specimen based on which
Beddome described the species.
“Unfortunately, searching the specimens at The
British Museum, Natural History (BM); Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (K) and The National
Herbarium, The Netherlands (L) also became futile.”, says the researchers.
Researchers seriously doubt that both the
species should be one and the same; however, without detailed surveys at the
Anamalais, it will be too early to speculate in that direction, say the
researchers.
After the discovery, now a specimen of the
plant is preserved at the herbarium at the Jawaharlal Nehru Tropical Botanic
Garden and Research Institute in Palode in Thiruvananthapuram. The researchers have
also added some individuals of the plant to the gene pool that is developed in
the institute as part of ex situ conservation of wild plant varieties.
E.S. Santhosh Kumar, P.E. Roy, and S.M.
Shareef from Jawaharlal Nehru Tropical Botanic Garden and Research Institute,
Palode, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala have co-authored the study.
