Application of leaf epidermal anatomical technique for identification of some grass species from district Bhimber of Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Pakistan

摘要

Grasses are main source of food (cereals), fodder of livestock and good source of therapeutics and cosmetics in traditional medicine systems of the world. It is rather difficult to identify and classify grasses properly. As these plants are ethnobotanically important and have been used for treatment of different disease in traditional cultural therapeutics for dyspepsia, burning sensation, piles, sexual weakness, gynecological troubles, respiratory troubles, Kidney stones, acid reflex, blood impurity, debility, diarrhea, lecuoderma, allergy, anemia, anuria, anticancer and antidiabetic. It is pertinent that identifying grass species is very difficutl task if based on only morphological features. The key purpose of this research was to identify the selected taxa of grasses by using morphometric analysis and leaf epidermal anatomical approach from District Bhimber of Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK). Following species grasses: Cynodon dactylon L. , Saccharum spontanium L. , Saccharum ravennae L. , Poa annua L. and Poa nemoralis L. were selected for this study. In morphometric analysis; cluster was formed which divided relevant species into distinct groups (taxon). Genetic distance (GD) was calculated to explore inter and intra-species variation. It was found that taxa from Bhimber area had highest GD (135) while species from Barnala showed least GD (83). From Leaf epidermal anatomy (LEA) study, stomatal index (SI) was calculated and among Saccharum genus: Saccharum spontanium showed highest SI (23.6) while Saccharum revennae had SI value of 12.6. In other genus Poa: Poa nemoralis depicted SI of (20.4) and while Poa annua had SI of 12.5. Other genus Cynodon (out group): Cynodon dactylon showed stomatal index of (15.0). Taxonmic keys has been devised for proper identification of all taxa under this study.