Portulaca laljii: Newly discovered Sun Rose Species.
The new species, Portulaca laljii with potential of horticultural significance discovered from the Eastern Ghats, India as new to science. The Eastern Ghats are home garden for rich biodiversity of both flora and fauna. Which are harboured tropical, deciduous and dry deciduous forests. This geographical region is astonished with number of hotspots, reserve forests and sacred groves contain number of endemic, endangered and threatened species. While inventorying the floristic diversity Researchers, P. Sivaramakrishna and P. Yugandhar from Department of Botany, Sri Venkateswara University, Tirupati has discovered a new species of Portulaca from Bhairavakona of Eastern Ghats situated in Prakasam District of Andhra Pradesh, India. After conduction of several feild studies from April 2018 to February 2020 and thorough investigation researchers concluded that this plant is new to scientific world. The species has named as Portulaca laljii honoured in the name of an eminent botanist, Lal Ji Singh, Joint Director & Head of Office, Andaman and Nicobar regional centre, Botanical survey of India, for his significant contribution to the plant taxonomy. This species is growing in rocky crevices with an elevation around 1800 MSL. P. Sivaramakrishna, one of the researchers, behind the discovery, said.
Sun rose flowers are beautiful growing ornamental plant with their mix of beautiful colors of pink, red, yellow, orange, deep lavender, cream and white which attract the evolutionary and ecological precursors (butterflies) as well as acting as eye-catchers for gardens or landscapes. Such types of animal plant interactions are always helpful to speculate the salient questions regarding phylogenetic and natural histories of species. Botanically it belongs to the genus Portulaca which was described by Linnaeus in 1753 as a type genus of the flowering plant family Portulacaceae and presently comprising c. 100 taxa which are distributed throughout tropical and subtropical regions of the world. It is represented center of diversity in South America, Africa, and Australia but to a lesser extent in temperate Europe and Asia. In India, the earlier studies on the genus Portulaca have resulted 8 species.
P. laljii is very unique in its features such as procumbent herb, tuberous root, without hair in its axils, reddish pink flower with bract and bracteoles, sepals light yellow and light greenish tinge at ape, petals pink, emarginate, sometimes mucronate at apex, stamens 6-7, trifid style, fruit prolate capsule with 14–20 bilobular to subglobular, conspicuously beaked brown seeds. Apart from type localities; there are no data on the population of the species available in other states of India. Hence, it is assigned under data deficient category according to the IUCN (International code for the Botanical nomenclature) norms. This discovery of species laljii was published in an International journal “Journal of Asian Pacific Biodiversity, 13:(4):755-761. It is an official journal of National Science Museum of Korea (NSMK) and Korea National Arboretum (KNA).
