Second Supplement to Glossary of Indian Medicinal Plants with Active Principles (Part - 1, A to K)

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This is the Part I (A-K) of the second supplement to Glossary of Indian Medicinal Plants with Active Principles. The genesis is the pioneering work of R.L. Chopra and his co-authors: Glossary of Indian Medicinal Plants and its first supplement. The present volume covers about 850 medicinal genera including 1780 species of which about 700 are new ones did not find place in the first supplement. The nomenclature has been updated for all species and their properties, medicinal uses, chemical constituents and active principles, including disease-causing ones, have been described. Indian language names and distribution are also provided for new ones.

Life-saving compounds like vinblastine, vincristine, digoxin and digitoxin and other important ones such as gossypol have been dealt with in some details.

Studded with extensive Indian and foreign references, the volume should be an asset to economic botanists, research workers in various disciplines of science, and industrialists, particularly those dealing with pharmaceuticals and cosmetics.

The Second Supplement to Glossary of Indian Medicinal Plants with Active Principles, covers information by and large from 1965 to 1981. Part I (A-K) of this supplement runs into 414 pages covering 841 genera with 689 new species. The number of periodicals referred to for this volume were 1245.

The credit for completing the Part I (A-K) of the Second Supplement goes primarily to Miss L.V. Asolkar, who along with her colleagues Dr. 0.1. Chakre and Dr. K.K. Kakkar, have done a commendable job of not only up-dating this Glossary Supplement from 1965 onwards, but also incorporating other relevant earlier information thereby making it comprehensive. Further information on active principles in some detail, albeit Glossary style, is also included.

This Part I of Second Supplement to Glossary would complement the two volumes of Compendium of Indian Medicinal Plants by Rastogi and Mehrotra published by us. Whereas the former gives plant - partwise information on medicinal uses/properties and chemical constituents followed by information on active principles with standard chemical names for important ones and structure-activity correlationship, the later enlists chemical constituents, new compounds with graphic structures, and biological activities.

We hope to publish early, Part II of this Supplement which will cover the remaining plants with names starting with alphabets L to Z. In the mean time, research workers in chemistry and pharmacology and even industrialists can derive benefits from the information covered in Part I (A-K), which is bound to prove an asset to them as was Chopra's Glossary of Indian Medicinal Plants.

This long-awaited "Second Supplement to Glossary of lndian Medicinal Plants with Active Principles, Part I (A-K)" covers as many as 841 medicinal genera of which 219 are new; 1780 species of which 689 are carved for the first time. As before, the information on plants is arranged alphabetically according to their botanical names. Those that appear for the fist time in this volume are marked with an asterix.

The Second Supplement to Glossary is designated to cater to the needs of economic botanists, research chemists and pharmacologists, drugs and pharmaceutical industrialists, and those involved in the production of perfumes and cosmetics. Even health conscious individuals could derive some benefit from the coverage of food plants many of which have some medicinal property or other.

Primarily, this volume has put together information that became available from 1965 to 1981. However, even earlier information has been included if the article so demanded. In Acarus; biosystematics have been covered in some details. Confusing information on Abrus lectins, abrins and agglutinins has been sorted out for the benefit of users.

This volume covers information upto 1981 which coincides with the last coverage year of the 10th Collective Indexes of Chem Abstr. This can make it convenient for the users to update the article(s) by scanning subsequent collective indexes wherever available.

This Supplement uses up-dated nomenclature, mainly through the efforts of Dr. O.J.Chakre, who also gave new medicinal species in both existing as well as new genera, their Indian names, medicinal properties and/or uses and distribution through a number of floras and other standard works. It also gives names of transferred genera as per the international convention and not their species.

The spadework for medicinal and chemical information for all the existing and new species has been done by Dr. K.K. Kakkar; new species were also added by him through original papers. More than 25,000 references have been scanned for the purpose.

Standardization of the chemical compound names was beyond the realm of this Supplement. However, in the case of important medicinal compounds, this exercise has been done. Compounds of economic importance and of topical interest have been covered in some details.

Asarones or rather j3-asarone may require some more information. Hederagenin, as saponin has beep retained because of the residual sugar moiety in the genin. ß-Sitosterol is a mixture of j3-sitosterol and campesterol, as per Thomson et al., Steroids, 1963, 2, 505. Double spellings of compounds prevalent in literature have been included, in fact both English and American spellings have been used for compounds as well as activities, however, 'e' has been added for German spellings for names of alkaloids ending with 'n'. Radicals rather than their full names 'have been used in the compounds; some liberties such as di-OH for dihydroxy in place of -(OH)2 have been taken, while full compound names have been included in the index; readers finding any difficulty should consult the reference incorporated in the text.

International standards for periodical abbreviations have been used with some modifications. Wherever periodicals and CA years happen to be the same, only volume number is mentioned for CA. In this Supplement, natl stands for Natural and Nat for National whereas the international standards demand vice versa. Our apology to the users for interchanging of abbreviations.,

Coloured photo of Catharanthus rose us or sadabahar on the jacket is by Dr. Ramesh Bedi of New Delhi on the left side of sadabahar are line drawings of Digitalis lanata (top); and sclerotia of Claviceps purpurea (below); on the back side is Cannabis sativa.

I take this opportunity of expressing my gratitude to those who rendered their co-operation in Glossary work at one time or other.

Thanks are due to Miss Rohini Kaul, for her efficient typing as also for computerizing of some portions of the manuscript, and to Mrs. Indu Sanhotra and Mrs. Renu Manchanda for giving a helpful hand in typing some of the major articles for making them press- ready.