Morpho-Anatomical, Ex-situ Conservation and Haemolytic Activity of Pentaphragma grandiflorum Kurz.

Pentaphragma grandiflorum Kurz. is one of the five (5) species of Pentaphragma that is found in the Philippines. It is an edible flowering plant consumed as a vegetables and utilized for its medicinal value by the locals. It is categorized as one of the Other Threatened Species with a high economic value. Despite the many uses of P. grandiflorum, there is still inadequate information on its morpho-anatomical characteristics conservation and lack of scientific evidence to support the claim of its safe utilization by the locals. The collected wildlings of the P. grandiflorum were nurtured and monitored in the canopy greenhouse of Central Mindanao University, Philippines. The safe utilization of the leaf extract of P. grandiflorum was assessed through a haemolytic assay. The following are the morpho-anatomical features described in this study: fleshy erect shrub with primary and aerial roots; stem puberulous at a young stage and glabrous upon maturity with dictyostele type of stele; petiole fleshy, puberulous, dissected vascular bundle with dictyostele arrangement; leaf finely puberulous adaxial and glabrous abaxial, dictyostele arrangement, midrib amphibrical arrangement, with tri- to tetracytic stomates; inflorescence arises singly in axil, bisexual, elongated, with yellow and/or purple corolla. Fifty-three out of 130 wildlings survived and abundantly produced bisexual flowers in the succeeding months. The 1 mg/mL concentration of ethanolic and methanolic leaf extracts of P. grandiflorum were found to have an average haemolysis percentage of 0.32 ± 6.78 and 0.45 ± 0.65, respectively. The result of the haemolysis assay revealed that the ethanolic and methanolic leaf extract of P. grandiflorum is safe to utilize and do not pose any toxic effects to humans

New Insights on the Morphology of the Philippine Endemic Ficus pseudopalma Blanco

Ficus pseudopalmaBlanco is an endemic Philippine plant with many medicinal uses and an ethnobotanically as a green vegetable or side dish.With these several eco-nomic uses of the plant, there is a need to investigate the morpho-anatomy and de-velopment of the species.Seeds of F. pseudopalmawere collected in Mt. Hamigui-tan Range Wildlife Sanctuary and grown in the Central Mindanao University Garden to monitor the growth and development of the species.Unique morpho-anatomical features include sparingly branched glabrous stem with spirally-arranged reddish ter-minal leaves crowded at the apical part, paired persistent stipules, anomocytic sto-mata, without glandular hairs and with leptocentric bundles in the petiole. The inflo-rescence is likewise unique,being enclosed to form a syconium (fig) which occurs in pairs and axillary. The flowers are imperfect with the staminate flowers situated the osteole while the pistillate flowers are at the syconia's interiorand pollinated by agaonid wasps. The seeds germinated after fourdays of sowing, and syconia were formed after 365 days exhibiting several stages of development. These morphologi-cal and developmental characteristics are important in mass propagating this en-demic plant for its medicinal and food uses