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.
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.
“Due to the appearance of tubular red corolla, some of the species under the genus Aeschynanthus are called lipstick plants,” BSI scientist Krishna Chowlu said in an article on the discovery published in Current Science journal.
During floristic studies in Arunachal Pradesh, Chowlu collected a few specimens of Aeschynanthus from Hyuliang and Chipru of Anjaw district in December 2021.
A review of the relevant documents as well as a critical study of the fresh specimens confirmed that the specimens were Aeschynanthus monetaria, which had never been obtained from India since Burkill in 1912.
As per the article co-authored by Gopal Krishna, 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.
