Pharmacognostic studies of flowers of Calycopteris floribunda Lam. A multi potent medicinal plant

Abstract

Calycopteris floribunda Lam. is commonly known as paper flower climber endemic to south Asian countries. It is used for the treatment of diarrhea, jaundice, malaria, wound healing, ulcers and snake bites. The previous studies on C. floribunda showed that the plant has anthelmintic, antimicrobial, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, hepatoprotectivity and anticancerous activity. Even though, plant has significant medicinal value there are no reports available on the pharmacognostic standardization of the characters of the plant. Hence the present work is undertaken to standardize the pharmacognostic parameters. In this work pharmacognostic study of flowers is done which includes macroscopic, organoleptic study, powder microscopy, physico-chemical characterization (ash values, loss of moisture, foaming index, pH and extractive yields) and fluorescence analysis of flower powder. The present work is provided the valuable information regarding the standardized of pharmacognostic parameters of flowers of C. floribunda, which can be used for identification, authentication and the quality of the crude drugs for the further studies.