A team of botanists led by Maya C. Nair, Associate Professor at Government Victoria College, Palakkad, discovered two new plants from the Nelliyampathy forests recently. The discoveries were published by international botany journal Phytotaxa in its February and August issues.
The plants belonged to the Poaceae grass family found in grasslands more than 1,000 metre above the sea level. Dr. Maya and team named the plants after environmentalist and poet Sugathakumari and botanist C.N. Sunil.
One of the plants was named Tripogon sugathakumariae and the other Ischaemum sunilii. Dr. Maya said that they were privileged to name the newly discovered plants after the two persons who contributed a lot to environment conservation.
Ischaemum sunilii was found from Govindamala while exploring the floristic diversity of the hill ranges of Nelliyampathy forest region. “It was morphologically distinct from hitherto know species,” Dr. Maya said.
Tripogon sugathakumariae was found during a search conducted at Mattumala region of Nelliyampathy forests. It took a couple of years to establish that the plant the research team stumbled upon was unique and different from any known species.
Phytotaxa published the discovery of Tripogon sugathakumariae in its February issue 536 (1), and that of Ischaemum sunilii in its August issue 556 (2).
Apart from Dr. Maya, the research team comprised Jabeena M.K., Ramya S., Athira S., CSIR-National Botanical Research Institute, Lucknow, scientist K.M. Prabhukumar, former Associate Professor of SNM College, Maliyankara, C.N. Sunil, Nitya M., and scientist at Malabar Botanical Garden, Kozhikode, Hareesh V.S.
