Morphological Characterisation of Some Important Indian Garcinia Species

Abstract EN

The genus Garcinia has over 200 species distributed in the tropics of the world.

About 35 species occur in India, many of which are endemic and economically important with immense medicinal properties.

However, lack of awareness, coupled with habitat destruction, leads to genetic erosion of this forest resource and many species are threatened.

The Indian Institute of Spices Research (IISR), Calicut, has Garcinia genetic resources’ collection of 15 species of Western Ghats and Eastern Himalaya species.

The morphological characterisation of the species of these two different eco systems indicates that there are variations within the species of the same ecosystem while there are similarities in the species of two different ecosystems.