Researchers document new species of African Violet in Mizoram

Researchers at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) in Bhopal have documented a new species of plant belonging to the family of African Violets – a popular horticultural choice in herbariums and green-houses across the world – at Mizoram

Researchers at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) in Bhopal have documented a new species of plant belonging to the family of African Violets – a popular horticultural choice in herbariums and green-houses across the world – at Mizoram.

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The discovery has been recently documented in the peer-reviewed journal Systematic Botany (published by American Society for Plant Taxonomists), nearly four years after the specimen was first observed in the field.

Researchers have also documented the presence of the same species in adjacent Myanmar, and said it may also exist in parts of China.

The species belongs to the genus ‘Didymocarpus’, belonging to the plant family Gesneriaceae (which are more popularly known as African Violets).

“Its members are distributed from Western Himalayas to Sumatra. Most of these species are narrow endemics and require specialised habitats to survive, thus acting as an indicator of pristine habitats. There are 106 currently known species of this genus, of which 26 are present in the North-Eastern states of India,” the paper’s authors said in a statement on Monday.

The newly described species has been christened ‘Didymocarpus vickifunkiae’, and named after the late Dr Vicki Ann Funk, who was a renowned botanist with USA’s Smithsonian Institute.

“The species is currently known to occur only in three locations in Mizoram, and can be categorised as an endangered species based on a standardised assessment devised by the International Union for Conservation of Nature,” said Dr Vinita Gowda, associate professor, department of biological sciences, IISER.

“These findings continue to highlight the taxonomic endemism that we see among the flora of the north-east. Such endemism is typically seen in island habitats, where the species arrives and then the further evolutionary process becomes much localised. It’s something that we have seen in the north-eastern states but we don’t know exactly why, because tectonic histories in India are so complex,” Gowda added.

These findings, which are based on in situ and ex situ studies (including molecular phylogenetic analyses with similar African Violet species from other herbariums across the world), are part of a larger study currently being undertaken by Gowda and her PhD students, to extensively document the genus Didymocarpus in India. This will help researchers to better understand the plant’s evolutionary traits needed to survive in this country (as opposed to China, Japan, African countries and South American countries, where it is also widely distributed).