Researchers at the Botanical Survey of India (BSI) have rediscovered a rare plant, which is sometimes called the ‘Indian lipstick plant’, from remote Anjaw district in Arunachal Pradesh after more than a century. Due to the appearance of the tubular red corolla, some of the species under the genus Aeschynanthus are called lipstick plants.
The plant (Aeschynanthus monetaria Dunn) was first identified by British botanist Stephen Troyte Dunn in 1912, based on the plant samples gathered from Arunachal Pradesh by another English botanist, Isaac Henry Burkill.
According to the journal, Aeschynanthus Jack (Gesne-riaceae), an epiphytic evergreen tropical Asian genus with 174 species, is found mostly from southern China to tropical Asia. Twenty-six taxa represent the plant’s genus in India.
The plant grows in moist and evergreen forests, at elevations ranging from 543 to 1134 m. The flowering and fruiting time is between October and January.
Concern
The species has been provisionally assessed here as ‘endangered’, following the guidelines of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the global authority on the status of the natural world and the measures needed to safeguard it.
Landslides are common in Arunachal Pradesh’s Anjaw district. In Arunachal Pradesh, development activities such as road widening, school construction, new settlements and marketplaces, and jhum cultivation are some of the greatest threats to this species.
