KERALA
- Kerala is home to two new plant species
- A small ironwood tree that bears clumps of white flowers on its stalks, and a new species of wild fern are the latest additions to Kerala’s flora.
- Currently, the plant is known only from within the Mathikettan Shola National Park and its immediate environs.
- Due to these potential threats as well as its rarity, the team suggests that the species be categorised as ‘Near Threatened’ based on criteria listed in the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources.
- However, the other plant discovered recently, the wild fern Pteris subiriana, is found not just in Kerala but also Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra.
- Using a scanning electron microscope, they studied the arrangement of the ferns’ spores (small globules located under fern leaves through which ferns reproduce).
- This showed that these ferns — which grow near waterfalls — are a new species, according to their study published in the international journal Phytotaxa.
- The new species Laccaria violaceotinctais currently known only from the single area it has been collected from by the team: the threatened myristica swamps of Kulathupuzha in Kollam district.