Comparative morphological study of three species of Saraca L. (Fabaceae) by the statistical approach to find out the logic of potent morphological markers

• Main Authors: Sujit Sil, Tanmoy Mallick, Kalyan Kumar De, Arabinda Pramanik, Asok Ghosh
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: SpringerOpen 2018-12-01
• Series: Beni-Suef University Journal of Basic and Applied Sciences
• Online Access: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2314853517305188

The genus Saraca L. (Fabaceae s.l.) has 11 species among which three are distributed in India. This study is done for these three species as S. indica L., S. declinata (Jack) Miq., and S. thaipingensis Cantley ex Prain which are taxonomically recognized and identified by morphological characters, both of vegetative and reproductive. As a common trend of taxonomic study key to the identification of taxa is based on contrast pairs of lead characters considering as good characters to the taxonomic work when these characters are different in different taxa. The present study is emphasized here again to find out the marker characters for identity with the approach of preparation of ternary plot considering 82 characters through statistical method. Morphological characters like the texture of ovary, the presence of hood on anther and distribution of hairs on anther, bract and stigma morphology, shape and size of the seed, pollen surface etc. are found to be potent morphological markers for these three species of Saraca. The marker character to prepare a better key of identity is also established by this method. Earlier works on taxonomy also support this finding. The results show the relationship and character correlation amongst the species as S. declinata is more close to S. thaipingensis than S. indica. This work approaches a basis to strengthen a part of classical taxonomy. Keywords: Statistical method, Morphological-markers, Ternary plot, Saraca