Pilea victoriae , a new plant species discovered by a team of botanists from the Government Victoria College campus, is a fresh entrant to the exclusive club of plants named after educational institutions.
The latest issue of the International Journal of Advanced Research (IJAR) has confirmed the discovery saying the rare plant species from the Pilea Lindley family belongs to the mural flora of the Western Ghats.
The name of the plant is in recognition of the college’s contributions to the fields of botany and taxonomy during its 130 years of existence.
According to botanists Sojan Jose and V. Suresh, who led the team that spotted the new plant, only very few plants and species are known after educational institutions. Hareesh V.S., Robi A.J., Resmy P.S., Dinesh Raj R., Asha V.V., Prakash Kumar R., and Madhusoodhanan P.V. are the other botanists who formed part of the research activity that began in 2009 and ended in 2014.
“Our attempt was to research the diversity of flowering plants in the Western Ghats. It was by chance that we spotted the rare plant on the campus,” said Mr. Sojan, who works with the Botany Department at the Victoria college.
It was after spotting it on the campus that the researchers found similar species in areas such as Kollengode, Malampuzha and Perinthalmanna.
The micro-plant that grows in shades and isolated areas could be seen in abundance during rainy seasons. The flowering happens throughout the year.
“Though it shows affinities with common Pilea, the new species differs in many attributes. This is an endangered species and needs conservation,” said the researchers in their paper. As it was a micro-species, the researchers had to conduct its DNA profiling before publishing the research paper.
Mr. Sojan and Mr. Harish, who works with the Department of Botany at Calicut University, were part of an earlier research that discovered a rare plant species in the Karassury region of the Nelliampathy hills, which comprise the Kollengode range of forests.
The plant named Oldenlandia vasudevanii and its discovery were authenticated by PHYTOTAXA , an international journal on Taxonomy. Both the research works were conducted under expert guidance from the Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology in Thiruvananthapuram and Kozhikode-based Malabar Botanical Garden.
