http://starc.stthomas.ac.in:8080/xmlui/xmlui/handle/123456789/38 2026-04-18T12:00:29Z http://starc.stthomas.ac.in:8080/xmlui/xmlui/handle/123456789/440 A NEW SECTION (BEGONIA SECT. FLOCCIFERAE SECT. NOV.) AND TWO NEW SPECIES IN BEGONIACEAE FROM THE WESTERN GHATS OF INDIA Krishna, N; Britto, S J; Thomas, S; Mani, B; Pradeep, A K; Jithin, K V Two new species, Begonia bracteolata and Begonia keralensis, are described from the Western Ghats of India. They are placed in the newly created Begonia sect. Flocciferae, along with B. albococcinea Hook. and B. floccifera Bedd. Lectotypes are designated for three names within this section. Colour photoplates, illustrations and an identification key to Begonia sect. Flocciferae are also provided. 2019-11-01T00:00:00Z http://starc.stthomas.ac.in:8080/xmlui/xmlui/handle/123456789/432 An Efcient Mobile Application for Identifcation of Immunity Boosting Medicinal Plants using Shape Descriptor Algorithm Thanikkal, Jibi G.; Dubey, Ashwani Kumar; Thomas, M. T. In the Covid-19 pandemic situation, the world is looking for immunity-boosting techniques for fghting against coronavirus. Every plant is medicine in one or another way, but Ayurveda explains the uses of plant-based medicines and immunity boosters for specifc requirements of the human body. To help Ayurveda, botanists are trying to identify more species of medicinal immunity-boosting plants by evaluating the characteristics of the leaf. For a normal person, detecting immunity-boosting plants is a difcult task. Deep learning networks provide highly accurate results in image processing. In the medicinal plant analysis, many leaves are like each other. So, the direct analysis of leaf images using the deep learning network causes many issues for medicinal plant identifcation. Hence, keeping the requirement of a method at large to help all human beings, the proposed leaf shape descriptor with the deep learning-based mobile application is developed for the identifcation of immunity-boosting medicinal plants using a smartphone. SDAMPI algorithm explained numerical descriptor generation for closed shapes. This mobile application achieved 96%accuracy for the 64×64 sized images. 2023-04-21T00:00:00Z http://starc.stthomas.ac.in:8080/xmlui/xmlui/handle/123456789/419 Comparative spore morphology of ten species of the genus Ophioglossum L. from Kerala, India Khan, Afsana; Anto, P V; Antony, Ignatius The eusporangiate fern Ophioglossum brings some uncertainty among taxonomists while identifying the species. Therefore, a combined approach by considering the spore morphology and other morphological characters is more authentic for delimiting species of this genus. This study documented and compared the spore morphology of O. costatum, O. gramineum, O. lusitanicum, O. lusoafricanum, O. parvifolium, O. pendulum, O. petiolatum, O. raphaelianum, O. reticulatum, and O. rubellum collected from Kerala, India by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) analysis. SEM images of the spores for each species were provided, the P/E ratio was calculated, and the size classes of the spores were determined here. The occurance of O. lusitanicum in India was confirmed, and O. madhusoodhananii was synonymised under O. costatum. 2023-10-15T00:00:00Z http://starc.stthomas.ac.in:8080/xmlui/xmlui/handle/123456789/404 A new species of Parthenocissus (Vitaceae) from India with notes on Causonis trifolia Dominigose, Nimmi Chungath; Anto, Puthur Varghese; Pradeep, Ayilliath K A new species of Parthenocissus, P. wallichianus is described and illustrated from Kerala, India. This taxon was found and collected previously from India but misunderstood by earlier Indian botanists for names under various combinations among the such as Vitis, Cissus, Cayratia, and Causonis. The combinations were based either on the Linnaean Vitis trifolia or on Lamarck's Cissus carnosa. Both these names are currently accepted as conspecific and validated now as belonging to Causonis trifolia (L.) Mabb.et J. Wen. The new taxon has separated from all these genera by a suit of characters and is shown fit best to the genus Parthenocissus. A key for the identification of Indian species of Parthenocissus is also provided. 2023-06-30T00:00:00Z