- NET Web Desk
A team of researchers have rediscovered the Indian lipstick plant – Aeschynanthus monetaria Dunn, after 100 years from Hyuliang and Chipru regions in Arunachal Pradesh’s Anjaw District.
As per the abstract of Current Science journal, the genus name Aeschynanthus is derived from the Greek aischyne or aischyn, which means shame or to feel embarrassed, respectively, and anthos, which means flower, alluding to the generally red-colored corolla.
According to a scientist with the Arunachal Pradesh Regional Centre of Botanical Survey of India, “Due to the appearance of tubular red corolla, some of the species under the genus Aeschynanthus are dubbed ‘lipstick plants’”.
Stephen Troyte Dunn, a British botanist, identified this species in 1912 based on plant samples gathered from Arunachal Pradesh by another English botanist – Isaac Henry Burkill.
A review of the relevant literature, as well as a critical study of fresh specimens and digital photographs of specimens in the Kew Herbarium Catalogue, confirmed that the specimens were A. monetaria, which had never been obtained from India since Burkill in 1912.
Such plants can be found in moist and evergreen forests, at elevations ranging from 543 to 1134 metres.
The fleshy orbicular leaves of Aeschynanthus monetaria Dunn, which have a greenish upper surface and a purplish-green lower surface, are morphologically unique and unusual among all Aeschynanthus species known from India.
