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Researchers from CSIR-Institute of Himalayan Bioresource Technology have described a new plant species, Doronicum sanctum.
It belongs to the genus Doronicum, commonly called Leopard's Bane, in the sunflower family Asteraceae.
The plant was recorded in Tawang district of Arunachal Pradesh at about 4,086 metres above sea level.
It is the first member of the genus Doronicum documented from Northeast India; earlier Indian records were confined to the Western Himalayas.
The species epithet 'sanctum' means 'holy' in Latin, after the sacred landscape near the type locality.
Asteraceae is among the largest families of flowering plants. What looks like a single flower is actually a head made of many tiny florets. Its dry, one-seeded fruit is called a cypsela, and the modified calyx sitting on top of it is the pappus - the parachute of hairs that carries a dandelion seed on the wind. Doronicum sanctum was separated from its relatives by yellow flowers, heart-shaped leaves, pubescent (finely hairy) ray cypselae and a caducous pappus, meaning a pappus that falls away early rather than persisting.
Simple Analogy: A sunflower head is not one flower but a crowd of them sharing a seat; the pappus is the little parachute each seed straps on before leaving.
Another alpine member of the sunflower family described from the Tawang region, from the banks of Penga-Teng Tso lake at about 4,100 metres. It was assessed as Critically Endangered, with only about 270 mature individuals known from a single location.
One of the biodiversity hotspots represented in India, along with the Western Ghats-Sri Lanka, Indo-Burma and Sundaland (Nicobar Islands). Repeated new plant discoveries from Tawang reflect how under-surveyed its alpine zone is.
The nodal body for plant taxonomy and floristic survey in India, which publishes the annual 'Plant Discoveries' compilation recording new species and new records added to Indian flora each year.
Tawang lies in the far north-west of Arunachal Pradesh, bordering Bhutan to the west and the Tibet Autonomous Region of China to the north, and is reached over the Sela Pass from the Kameng region.
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The exact place from which the specimen used to formally describe a new species was collected.
Found naturally in one restricted geographical area and nowhere else.
A plant part that falls off early, as opposed to one that persists on the plant.