A new and rare species of climber has been discovered in the Western Ghats in Idukki district of Kerala. The discovery was made by a team of scientists from the Jawahar Lal Nehru Tropical Botanical Garden and Research Institute.
The climber belongs to the same family as Colocasia, the popular indoor plants with broad heart-shaped leaves. It has been named Pothos boyceanus in honour of botanist Peter C. Boyce, an expert on Araceae of southeast Asia.
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The discovery was made by G. Rajkumar, Nazarudeen Ahammed, T. Shaju, and R. Prakashkumar (Director, JNTBGRI) and has been published in Taiwania, an international journal of biodiversity.
The team came across the climber while on a floral survey of the Valara area of Idukki in the Western Ghats. Dr. Nazarudeen feels the climber has the potential of being grown as an indoor plant but studies are needed to understand other characteristics of the species.
The researchers describe the plant as having “a ligule, long-winged petiole, asymmetric lamina, long single cataphyll, slender peduncle, presence of a stipe, long cylindric spadix with a lorate spathe equal to the length of the spadix and 1˗3 seeded ovate berry ripening milky white at the base and light violet towards the tip.”
The climber was growing sporadically in an area of less than 10 sq. km along the foothills of the southern Western Ghats on rich damp soil. During the survey, the researchers could hardly find less than 100 plants and believe that this species might already be rare.
With this discovery the number of climber species from the Genus Pothos in Kerala has grown to six.
Reference Image via taiwania
