Abstract:The current study presents investigations on the scape anatomical characteristics of Urginea indica population, a geophyte growing in India, Africa and Mediterranean regions. For scape anatomical studies transverse sections of inflorescence axis were taken and studied for the first time. The twelve different population studied revealed that outer most epidermis of inflorescence is covered by thick cuticle. Cortex is differentiated into 3 regions outer chlorenchyma, middle collenchyma and inner parenchyma. But the shape and number of rows of cells vary in different populations collected from various localities of Karnataka. Vascular bundles are arranged in 3 rows, 2 rows in few populations and number. of vascular bundles vary. Larger bundles varies from 5-8, medium 8-12 and smaller bundles 5 to 21 in number. Xylem elements are uniseriate and biseriate in few. Some populations show Myelin structures and cell inclusions, based on their ecological habitat. The distinctions among cross sections of scapes are evident and our findings offer a comprehensive study using anatomical traits for delimitation and diagnosing populations of U.indica providing a platform for further taxonomic investigations.

Abstract:In the present study on Urginea indica, twelve different populations from southern part of India is considered. Fifteen parameters have been scored for each population to understand the relationship between different races. The main objective is to trace phylogeny in populations of U. indica to construct phylogenetic tree. The phylogenetic tree obtained is an unrooted tree. The parsimony tree describes that Shimoga and Chamundi hill populations have parallely evolved and forms the out group. Dopaegowdanapura population has given rise to Gopalaswamy betta, Gopalaswamy betta has given rise to Banganavadi and Banganavadi has given rise to one population which is missing in the tree and the missing population has given rise to Gorur on one hand and to Krishna Raja Sagar island and Gandhi Krishi Vighnayana Kendra on the other hand. Krishna Raja Sagar island and Gandhi Krishi Vighnayana Kendra shares a common clade. Gorur has given rise to Papanasini and Papanasini has given rise to Channamallipura, from Channamallipura another population has been evolved which is missing and the missing population has given rise to Basavanahalli and Ranganthittu which shares a Common clade. The Parsimony tree shows that these populations have evolved parallel. Dopaegowdanapura is the oldest from which all others are evolved. Ranganathittu and Basavanahalli form the youngest and latest. Therefore it is an unrooted tree with distance. Each population varied in their morphology and chromosome number and called as cytotypes. Difference in morphological character is mainly because of genetic characters. Habitat does not seem to play major role to mould morphological features.