Weeds of Asteraceae along the Agricultural tracts of Nizamabad District of Telangana State – A Palynological Observation

Abstract

Of the ongoing work on weed pollen morphology and phytochemical analysis, the present paper deals with the pollen morphological studies of weed plants investigated by light microscopy (LM). A morpho-palynological study of ten species of weeds that belongs to the Asteraceae family was carried out to document distinguishable microscopic features. The main objective of the present study was to provide basic knowledge about pollen morphological features of weed species of Asteraceae that help delimit the weed flora of the agricultural tracts of the Nizamabad district of Telangana state. The results show diversity among the qualitative and quantitative characteristics of pollen shape, symmetry, apertural pattern, and exine surface ornamentation. The pollen grains are spheroidal, prolate, sub-prolate, oblate and sub-oblate. Almost all species possess tricolporate apertural pattern except Blumea lacera, which pollen is tetracolporate. The Exine ornamentation in most species is tectate, echinate. The variations found in the pollen shape, apertural pattern, thickness and ornamentation of the exine and other characters were helpful at the genus and species-specific levels. This study provides baseline information to distinguish the species of weeds.