A team of botanists has recently stumbled upon a new rattlepod species in the Sadasivakona grove area of Chittoor district in Andhra Pradesh, which is part of the southern Eastern ghats. The discovery has been published in the latest edition of the noted international journal ‘Phytotaxa’.
During their field study, botanists P. Sivaramakrishna and P. Yugandhar from Sri Venkateswara University and Lalji Singh, Scientist-E from the Botanical Survey of India, Andaman and Nicobar regional centre, came across the species growing in the pasture lands in Sadasivakona.
After a critical investigation from July 2018 to November 2020, they found it to be a new species.
Named as Crotalaria lamelliformis, the ascending herb is unique for its distinct features such as adpressed white hairs beneath the lower surface of leaves, inflorescence short-terminal racemes, 6-8 bright yellow flowers, unequal calyx lobes, anterior two sepals fused and standard petal sub-orbicular with short claw surrounded by white cottony hairs.
Speaking to The Hindu, Dr. Sivaramakrishna said that the plant was also found in the nearby Kailasakona and Pudi areas. As the population and distributional range of the species is not clearly known, it has been assigned under ‘data deficient’ category following the IUCN (International Code for Botanical Nomenclature) rules, he said.
“The discovery of Crotalaria lamelliformis is an addition to the existing 116 species from India. Diversity of Crotalaria species is mostly confined to the peninsular India region,” Dr. Sivaramakrishna added.