Chemotaxonomic studies on <i>Schwenckia americana</i> LINN

Abstract

This study investigated the chemotaxonomic studies on Schwenckia americanaLinn., a member of the family Solanaceae predominantly found mostly in low grass fields, Nigeria. The habit is annual herbaceous weed with slender stem characterized with free branching and growing up to 45cm in height.They are used mainly as medicine. The leaves are simple, entire, elliptic to ovate in shape, smooth, variable, petiolate and larger at the lower region of stem and narrowing to smaller almost sessile and oblanceolate towards the apical regions which are alternately arranged and acrescently structured from the top to the base upto 3.7 ± 1.5cm long and 2.4±0.6cm wide. The inflorescence is a panicle of 15 or more flowers occurring at stem terminal.The flowers are whitish tubular structures measuring up to 1.0±0.2cm in length and 0.1cm in diameter. The petals are whitish up to 0.9 ±0.2cm in length and sepals are greenish up to 0.1cm in length. The berry fruit is greenish when unripe and pale yellowish when ripe up to 0.3±0.1cm in diameter. The seeds are blackish and spherical or triangular shaped with rough edges measuring up to 0.1cm in diameter. The epidermal studies reveal anomocytic stomata whereas the trichomes are simple uniseriate forms wth bulge heads. The anatomy of mid-ribs and petioles showed bicollateral vascular systems. There are three vascular traces and the node is unilacunar. The petioles have 2 rib traces at primary growth phase. At secondary growth phase, the mid-rib and petiole revealed vascular arcs and the stem has a ring of open vascular system. The cytological studies showed a diploid chromosome number of 2n = 24 and n = 12 for the haploids. Alkaloids, saponins, tannins, phlobatannins, flavonoids, combined anthraquinones, free anthraquinones and cardiac glycosides are present.© JASEM http://dx.doi.org/10.4314/jasem.v20i1.20

Metal Pollution Indices of Bottom Sediment and Surface Water Affected by Acid Mine Drainage

“…All statistical analysis was carried out with the Data Analysis Tool pack in Microsoft Office Excell 2007 and STATISTICA 7. Differences in the levels of the metals within, and between, the media were separated by a Duncan multiple range test at a 95% level of significance [18].…”

Anatomical variation and molecular characterization of Catharanthus roseus through RAPD analysis

“…Vascular tissues of C. roseus are bicollateral (Watson and Dallwitz, 1992). In all this investigation, the secondary growth phase indicated a complete ring structure of an open circulatory system in the stems, whereas the mid-ribs and petioles exhibited a vascular arc structure (Wahua et al, 2013). Quantitative measurements of different components of the anatomy of leaf and stem indicated clear difference exists among the types.…”

Efficacy of Some Plant Mulches and Tomato Cultivars on the Growth Parameters and Wilt of Tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum Mill) in Owerri, Imo State, South East, Nigeria

“…The experimental design used was a 3 x 4 factorial in Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) [11] replicated four (4) times. The treatments included (i) three levels of factor A: three tomato cultivars -ROMA VF cultivars (A 1 ), RIO GRANDE cultivar (A 2 ) and TROPIMECH cultivar (A 3 ).…”

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