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Utleria salicifolia Bedd. ex Hook.f. (Periplocaceae) A Monotypic, Endemic and Critically Endangered, Red Listed Medicinal Plant relocated from its type locality
Abstract
Utleria salicifolia Bedd. ex Hook.f., a monotypic, endemic, Critically Endangered and a little known Red Listed medicinal plant has been recollected from its type locality Anamalai Hills, Tamil Nadu. It is presented here with description, ecology and notes on its conservation focus.
... It prefers to grow horizontally on 90-degree steep rocky slopes, open big rock boulders, and rocky crevices of windswept vertical cliffs. The root stock is tuberous, cylindrical, moniliform, up to 50 cm long, approximately 4 cm thick, and pleasantly aromatic (Ravikumar et al. 2001). The plants shed their leaves from December to February, and new leaf initiation occurs in mid-February. ...
... Phoenix loureiroi Kunth, Strobilanthus sps. (Ravikumar et al. 2001). In the natural habitat, D. salicifolia is often misidentified with young plants of Alstonia venenata R. Br. due to similarities in their leaf morphology. ...
... The species was later located in another range of Coimbatore hills by Fischer in 1921. In 1999, Matthew recorded the species in Pambar Shola, Kodaikkanal hills, Tamil Nadu (Ravikumar et al. 2001). The species was relocated in its type locality of Annamalai hills, in the Top Slip reserve forest after about 115 years by Ravikumar et al. (2001). ...
Decalepis salicifolia (Bedd. ex Hook. f.) Venter is a potential medicinal and highly aromatic plant species confined to the southernmost part of the Western Ghats of India. The plant is well known for its traditional uses among the various tribal communities of south India. The tubers of the plant possess characteristic vanillin-like aroma due to the presence of the compound 2-hydroxy-4-methoxybenzaldehyde. The tubers are used to substitute Hemidesmus indicus in various herbal formulations. The plants in the wild are continuously uprooted for their roots, leading to the irreversible destruction of the whole plant. The resulting tremendous loss of populations in the wild led to the species being declared as critically endangered by IUCN. Our group is working on the various aspects of this species including population status, distribution mapping, prospection, and conservation management. In the present review, we have brought out the available information till date on D. salicifolia, including taxonomy, ethno-medicinal uses, phytochemistry, pharmacology, population status, and conservation efforts along with research gap and lacunae to provide direction for further research into this less explored medicinal and aromatic plant.
... The plant is steno-endemic and has restricted distribution along the forests of Tamil Nadu and Kerala, particularly confined to the Anamalai sub-cluster mountain range of south Western Ghats. The plant tubers are used in the Indian traditional medicine system for the treatment of skin diseases, asthma, and debility due to tuberculosis (Ravikumar et al. 2001). The tubers are also widely used by the tribal people of Tamil Nadu and Kerala in the form of pickle which is regarded to be beneficial in intestinal ailments and bleeding due to ulcers (Radhakrishnan et al. 1998). ...
... Further, the tubers are used along with Decalepis arayalpathra and Decalepis hamiltonii as a substitute to Hemidesmus indicus as 'Sariva Bheda' in the Ayurvedic formulations Amritamalaka taila, Drakshadi churna, Shatavari rasayana, and Yeshtimadhu taila (Nayar et al. 1978;Mishra et al. 2017). Due to its immense medicinal value and demand in the local herbal market, the local communities have been unsustainably collecting the tubers by uprooting the entire plant (Ravikumar et al. 2001). This has resulted in substantial decline in the natural population, leading to inclusion in critically endangered status based on the criteria B2ab (ii, iii) as per version 3.1 by International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) (Ved et al. 2015). ...
... It is inferred from our field studies that even though the seeds are dispersed by wind most of them land in the proximity. Moreover, the unique habitat of D. salicifolia is considered unsuitable for the possibility of other modes of seed dispersal (Ravikumar et al. 2001). The seeds are desiccation sensitive, lack dormancy, have a thick seed coat that may impede water imbibition and thus germination (Anandalakshmi and Prakash 2010). ...
Information on the genetic diversity and population structure is essential for developing conservational management programs, especially for threatened species. Decalepis salicifolia (Bedd. ex Hook.f.) Venter is a steno-endemic and critically endangered species of the south Western Ghats of India. The present study used ISSR markers as well as essential oil profiling to reveal the extent and distribution of genetic as well as the chemical diversity of all the twelve known populations of D. salicifolia. A total of 84 amplicons generated using 17 ISSR primers represented an overall 72.34% polymorphism. The highest percentage of polymorphic loci was recorded in the population of Theemalai (40.48%) and lowest in Kokanmalai (4.76%) with an average of 20.04% across all the studied populations. At the species level, the Nei’s genetic diversity observed was 0.255 ± 0.186, while Shannon’s information index observed was 0.385 ± 0.260. The genetic similarity-based unweighted pair-group method with arithmetic average dendrogram grouped the populations according to their geographic locations, which was corroborated by principal component analysis and Bayesian clustering. Distribution of genetic variance through analysis of molecular variance indicated that 38% variance resides within the population, and 62% variance resides among the populations (P < 0.001). Gas chromatography analyses of root volatiles showed significant variation in the percent content of 2-hydroxy-4-methoxybenzaldehyde. The Mantel test analyses showed a positive correlation between the genetic versus geographic distances. Based on the results, both ex situ and in situ conservation strategies are suggested to maximally preserve the genetic resources of this endangered species.
... The IUCN Red List categorizes the species as critically endangered (CR) with decreasing population trend (Ved et al. 2015). The woody shrub thrives in unique habitat of crevices in open rocky slopes and vertical cliffs at an altitude ranging from 1100 to 1250 m above mean sea level (Ravikumar et al. 2001). It has a long history of ethnomedicinal use among the tribal communities of Kerala and Tamil Nadu. ...
An efficient in vitro propagation and synthetic seed production protocol was established for the conservation of Decalepis salicifolia (Bedd. ex Hook.f.) Venter, an endemic and critically endangered ethnomedicinal species. Murashige and Skoog (MS) media supplemented with 2.2 μM BAP and 5.7 μM IAA produced shoot tip proliferation with an average shoot length of 5.81 ± 0.03 cm in 3 wk. Axillary bud proliferation was found to be best in 11.1 μM BAP with an average of 3.5 ± 0.06 shoots per explant. Shoot tip and nodal explants were encapsulated in sodium alginate and their regeneration was achieved following storage at 4°C up to 12 wk. Successful rooting was obtained in modified MS medium with low nitrate and high sucrose concentration. Quarter strength MS media containing 2.5 mM each of NH4NO3 and KNO3 along with 8% sucrose produced an average number of 12.4 ± 1.18 roots with an average length of 4.3 ± 0.08 cm. The in vitro derived rooted plants were successfully hardened (92.8%) and established in field with 100.0% survival rate. Inter-simple sequence repeat (ISSR) markers proved the genetic fidelity among the in vitro grown plant showing 99.5% similarity with the mother plant. Micropropagation derived acclimatized plants produced 2-hydroxy-4-methoxybenzaldehyde in amounts similar to seed-derived field-grown plants of the same age. The in vitro propagation protocol developed for D. salicifolia can be utilized to reduce exploitation pressure from their natural habitats and augment ecorestoration, conservation, and cultivation of this critically endangered and industrially valuable plant. The synthetic seeds technique will serve as propagules in ex situ gene banks, as well as supports cost-effective germplasm conservation.
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