Journal
of Threatened Taxa | www.threatenedtaxa.org | 26 July 2020 | 12(10):
16399–16401
ISSN 0974-7907 (Online) | ISSN 0974-7893 (Print)
doi: https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.5168.12.10.16399-16401
#5168 | Received 25 June 2019 | Final received 19
November 2019 | Finally accepted 16 July 2020
Recent record of a threatened holoparasitic plant Sapria himalayana Griff. in Mehao Wildlife Sanctuary, Arunachal
Pradesh, India
Arif Ahmad 1, Amit Kumar
2, Gopal Singh Rawat 3 & G.V. Gopi 4
1–4 Wildlife Institute of India, P.O.
Box # 18, Chandrabani, Dehra Dun, Uttarakhand 248001,
India.
1 arif000ahmad@gmail.com, 2 amit@wii.gov.in, 3
rawatg@wii.gov.in, 4 gopigv@wii.gov.in (corresponding author)
Editor: K. Haridasan,
Pallavur, Palakkad, Kerala, India. Date
of publication: 26 July 2020 (online & print)
Citation: Ahmad, A.,
A. Kumar, G.S. Rawat & G.V. Gopi (2020). Recent record of a threatened holoparasitic
plant Sapria himalayana
Griff. in Mehao Wildlife Sanctuary, Arunachal
Pradesh, India. Journal of
Threatened Taxa 12(10): 16399–16401. https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.5168.12.10.16399-16401
Copyright: © Ahmad et al. 2020. Creative
Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
JoTT allows unrestricted use, reproduction,
and distribution of this article in any medium by providing adequate credit to
the author(s) and the source of publication.
Funding: Fund support to
GVG from Department of Science and Technology
(SB/EMEQ-041/2014).
Competing interests: The authors
declare no competing interests.
Acknowledgements: Authors thank the Director and
Dean, Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun for institutional support, Forest
Department of Arunachal Pradesh for according necessary field permission and
DST, Government of India for fund support.
We are thankful to Mr. Kenjum Rina (DFO-Roing), Mr. Ipra Mekola (Member of Arunachal Pradesh State Board of
Wildlife) for their kind support in facilitating our fieldwork. We are grateful to our field assistants Mr.
Kiran Pulu, Ashok Sherpa, and Mr. Rajan
Lingi for their hard work and rigorous efforts during
field data collection.
In India, a variety of the
climatic, edaphic, and topographic variations have resulted in a great range of
habitats. Northeastern India, particularly, is
extremely diverse and rich in biodiversity (Singh 2003). Lying between 22–300N & 89–970E
and spread over 262,379km2, this region represents the transition
zone between the Indian, Indo-Malayan, and Indo-Chinese biogeographic regions
and a meeting place of the Himalayan mountains and peninsular India (Ramakantha et al. 2003).
Northeastern India is, thus, the
biogeographical ‘gateway’ for much of India’s flora and fauna, as a result, the
region is one of the richest in biological values. Despite being rich and diverse in terms of
biological diversity, the vegetation of the northeastern
India is fairly less known. With about
167,000km2 area under forest, this region accounts for approximately
7,500 species of angiosperms (Ramakantha
et al. 2003).
Arunachal Pradesh, the largest
state in northeastern India among the seven sisters
(a term used for the northeastern states
collectively) is situated between 26.5000N–91.5000E and
29.5000N–97.5000E. It covers a geographical area of
83,743km2. The state is
predominantly hilly with deep valleys, accompanied by a wide variation of
climate and soils that have resulted in the formation of varied ecological
diversity (Baishya et al. 2001). Mehao Wildlife
Sanctuary (WS) is rich in floral and faunal diversity and it harbours an
interesting and endangered plant species, Sapria
himalayana Griff., (Nayar
& Sastry, 1987), which was recorded for the first time from the sanctuary
(28.0830N–93.5000E and 28.2500N–95.7500E),
Lower Dibang Valley, Arunachal Pradesh and later in
2014 (Andreas & Jis 2014). This species is the largest root parasite
having a host specific relationship with the plant genus Tetrastigma
of Vitaceae family (Hajra
et.al. 2008) and T. bracteolatum (Wallich) Planchon and T. serrulatum (Roxb.) Planchon are reported as the host plants of Sapria in Namdapha
National Park (Arunachalam et al. 2004).
Sapria needs special attention due to
its botanical characteristics and a very restricted distribution around the
world (Borah & Ghosh 2018).
Globally, it is distributed in southeastern
Tibet, northeastern India, Myanmar (Burma), Thailand,
and Vietnam. In India, it was first
reported from the tropical wet evergreen forests of Mishmi Hills in Lohit District by William Griffith in 1847 and later from
Aka Hills in Kameng District by Norman Loftus Bor in 1938 (Borah & Ghosh 2018). Recently, it was reported by Jayom Karlo in the Perlek Modi Hills of West Siang and in Namdapha
Tiger Reserve in Changlang District (Borah &
Ghosh 2018). Earlier, Sapria was also distributed in Assam, Manipur, and
Meghalaya, however, all current locations of this plant are in Arunachal
Pradesh in the eastern Himalaya.
According to Elliot (1992), S. himalayana
is also known as a ‘Hermit’s Spittoon’ which has been reported
from the evergreen forest of Thailand which is similar in its habitat to the Mehao WS. Thailand
acts as a geographical bridge that connects communities from the northern parts
of the Himalayan mountain range and southern China to the Malay Peninsula and
Cambodia to Laos.
Sapria himalayana
belongs to
the Rafflesiaceae family, recognized as
large-flowered genera. The sister clades
Rafflesia, Rhizanthes,
and Sapria have reduced vegetative body among
all angiosperms. The members of Rafflesiaceae family produce the world’s largest flowers (Rafflesia arnoldii),
which is an iconic symbol of the southeastern Asian
rainforests. Rafflesia
and Sapria, however, share a very similar
conspicuous floral chamber. Thus, despite their superficial similarities, the
floral chambers are constructed differently in these two cousin genera (Nikolov et al. 2014).
Sapria himalayana is a rare holoparasitic (or obligate parasitic) flowering plant
which is completely dependent on its host plant for water, nutrients, and
products of photosynthesis. It
sucks food through a specialised root system called haustoria, which are
attached to both xylem and phloem of the host plant. The visible body is globose, flowers are dioecious and
unisexual. Flowers bloom in winter have
10 bracts each which are bright red in colour covered with
sulphur-yellow spots. Flowers are fleshy
with imbricate inflorescence while perianth being campanulate. It flowers in between August and September
followed by fruiting during winters.
Fruits are swollen and crowned with perianth. The seeds are of the size of grapefruit and
are blackish-brown in colour (Elliot 1992; Borah & Ghosh 2018).
The forests of Mehao WS have been facing disturbances due to anthropogenic
sources such as shifting cultivation and non-timber forest produce extraction
that are now visible in several parts of the sanctuary. During the early process of developing a
forest, the ground is lopped off followed by burning of forest remains, which
has severely damaged the host plants of Sapria. Sapria favours
shady, gentle slope, nutrient-rich humus soil with plenty of leaf litter on
forest floor, humid habitats with great canopy cover throughout. Sapria
generally grow in patches. We found
three flowers in one patch and five flowers in another patch. The patch which is found near Mehao Lake had three globose buds of Sapria. The parasitic plant is lesser-known and a
poorly understood taxon. The plant has
no known commodity value in terms of food, drug or other natural products for
the local inhabitants (Borah & Ghosh 2018).
Identification of their peculiar morphology is problematic and thus has
contributed greatly towards the confusion surrounding the plants evolutionary
affinities and development of their body plan.
Due to its restricted distribution, little knowledge about its host
range and host-parasite interaction exist.
Increased human interference and habitat shrinkage impose the risk of
extirpation. Further studies focusing on
population dynamics and vegetation ecology of Sapria
and its host species is suggested for its conservation.
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