Morphological Diversity and Nomenclature of <i>Swertia chirayita</i> (Gentianaceae)—Recovery of Endangered Medicinal Plant Population in North Eastern Himalaya

Abstract

Swertia chirayita is a highly endangered and very well known medicinal plant enlisted in the IUCN list of endangered plants in the world. The plant is currently having a very low population in eastern Himalayan region due to its very low germinability in its own natural habitat. The plant population was found to have a range of diversity in morphological observations and some of the morphovariants were found to be very low among the variant populations which created a concern due to its diminishing range of genetic base in this region. A basic group of 5 morphovariants and 24 sub variants were identified and separately maintained. It is a pluriannual plant and reproductive or flowering stage was observed after completion of two years of vegetative stage from the time of seed germination. A range of morphovariant diversity was observed in the populations of Neora Valley and Lava region of eastern Himalaya in our investigation. Diversity was critically observed in some of the parameters of different morphovariants in the population. Conservation practices were generally done by not making groups or sub groups of this endangered plant while we proposed the way of conservation by making groups for proper conservation of this vulnerable plant.

Assessment of Nursery Methods and Manures for Cultivation of Chirayita (Swertia chirayita Buch-Ham.) in Lauri Gewog, Bhutan

“…The traditional medicine systems use the whole plant (Bhargava et al, 2009;Tabassum et al, 2012), wherein the entire plant, including its roots is uprooted before seed setting, depriving the species of its natural regeneration potential (Aleem & Kabir, 2018). Further, the natural regeneration of chirayita is also affected due to poor seed germination and low viability (Chakraborty, Mukherjee, & Baskey, 2016;Chaudhuri, Pal, & Jha, 2007. Due to over-exploitation, unsustainable harvesting practices and habitat loss, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) listed the chirayita as one of the critically endangered plant species (Joshi & Dhawan, 2005;Kumar & Staden, 2016).…”