Mimusops andamanensis (Mimusops andamanensis)
Description
Mimusops andamanensis is an endangered species of flowering plant enlisted in the World List of Threatened Trees (Oldfield et al., 1998) with disjunct distribution in Sri Lanka and Andaman-Nicobar Islands. The ‘National Red List 2012 of Sri Lanka’ published by the Biodiversity Secretariat of the Sri Lankan Ministry of Environment in collaboration with the National Herbarium (Anonymous, 2007) also included Mimusops andamanensis under endangered category as per the IUCN criteria B1(i, ii,iii) and 2ab (i, ii, iii). This species was originally described by King and Gamble in 1906 based on a specimen procured from Port Mount Hill jungle of South Andaman Island by one of the King’s collectors dated as 16/04/1892 and has no authentic information on this species until 2014 other than type collection. According to Balakrishnan and Rao (1983) this taxon was known only from its type collection. Mimusops andamanensis remained as an exclusive endemic of the Andaman Islands until the taxon has been recognized from Sri Lanka in 2001 indicating its disjunct distribution in far off insular habitats from Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal. Mathew et al. reported this species from the Little Andaman Island in 2014 after the type collection in 1892 and collected seeds (Mathew et al., 2015). Seed germination protocol for Mimusops andamanensis under controlled conditions has also been standardized at Jawharlal Nehru Tropical Botanic Garden and Research Institute (JNTBGRI), Trivandrum, India as the part of ex-situ germplasm conservation of Andaman-Nicobar plant species outside the islands and the seedlings are well established qt the Field Gene Bank of the JNTBGRI(Mathew & Chitra, 2015).
Taxonomic tree
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Domain: Eukarya
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Kingdom: Plantae
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Phylum:
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Class: Magnoliopsida
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Order: Ericales
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Family: Sapotaceae
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Genus: Mimusops
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