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Two new plant species discovered from Shola forests

Two new plant species discovered from Shola forests 20/09/2019 – Posted in: Daily News

WESTERN GHATS

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Two new plant species discovered
About the Western Ghats

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Two new plant species discovered from Shola forests

A team of researchers discovered the two new plant species belonging to the Asclepiadaceae or milkweed family from the shola forests of the Western Ghats.
Latex in plant parts and pappus seeds are the general characteristics of the family.

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What

Tylophora balakrishnanii, a straggling vine, has been discovered from the Thollayiram shola in Wayanad, a biodiversity hotspot in the Nilgiri biosphere reserve. The tuberous species has been discovered by a team of researchers.
Tylophora neglecta has been discovered from the shola forest on the Thooval Mala hill under the Achencoil forest division in Kollam.
Researchers could find five to six Tylophora balakrishnanii and 15 to 16 Tylophora neglecta plants in the respective areas.

Highlights

The flowers of the new species are white with a violet tinge. Its leaves are thick and bristly in nature.
Flowers of the plant are reddish-pink and the species is similar to the coastal plant Tylophora flexuosa.

Western Ghats

These are also known as Sahyadri, are a mountain range that covers an area parallel to the western coast of the Indian peninsula, traversing the states of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Goa, Maharashtra and Gujarat.
It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is one of the eight “hottest hot-spots” of biological diversity in the world.
It contains a large proportion of the country’s flora and fauna, many of which are only found in India and nowhere else in the world.
According to UNESCO, the Western Ghats are older than the Himalayas.
The range runs north to south along the western edge of the Deccan Plateau, and separates the plateau from a narrow coastal plain, called Konkan, along the Arabian Sea.

Source: The Hindu

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