2nd draft

Pawar et al. (2011) conducted a study to investigate the pharmacognostical standardization of leaves of Caesalpinia pulcherrima  which is found throughout in India. Caesalpinia pulcherrima is one of Caesalpiniaceae family, commonly called peacock flower. This plant has many benefits especially the leaf part. It was used as antioxidant, antipyretic, antimicrobial, and antibacterial. From the study of Pawar et al. (2011), C. pulcherrima’s leaves were collected from garden of Government Hospital, India and were authenticated by botanist. In this study, the pharmacognostical standardization including morphological and microscopical characters of the leaves, historical test, powder characters, quantitative leaf microscopy, physico-chemical study, and preliminary phytochemical analysis. The result of microscopically transverse section of leaves consist of lamina and midrib region. Histological test reported that lignine, cuticle and calcium oxalate were substances inside the leaves of C. pulcherrima. Powder from C. pulcherrima’s leaves had green colour and presented xylem, phloem, stomata and epidermal cells. The fragment of lamina showed stomata and venation. Stomatal index was 20, stomatal number from upper part of epidermis was 28 and lower part was 31. The values of physico-chemical constants presented total ash, acid insoluble ash, water insoluble ash, and loss on drying were 5 ± 0.288, 1.375 ± 0.125, 1.25 ± 0.25, 8.33 ± 0.88 %w/w, respectively. Soluble extractives: alcohol, water, petroleum ether, chloroform, benzene, acetone presented the values were 8.2, 14.4, 1.4, 5, 5, 6 %w/w, respectively. In preliminary phytochemical analysis part presented flavonoids, glycosides, phenolic compounds, saponins, sterols, tannins, and triterpenes. In conclusion, the researcher suggested that the pharmacognostical characters might be useful to support about C. pulcherrima’s information and useful to prove the standardization criteria.

This study provides scientific evidence to support herbal medicine terms of the pharmacognostical standardization of leaves of C. pulcherrima which is necessary for new herbal drug development. However, there are some limitations.

1)      According to Chanda (2014), in India, pharmacognostical studies and standardization parameters should be consist of collection of plant materials, organoleptic characters, macroscopic study, microscopic study and Quantitative microscopy, powder microscopic observations, historical analysis, physico-chemical constants, phytochemical analysis, fluorescence analysis. In this study did not investigate all methods that were an important point to do pharmacognostical standardization.

2)      In physico-chemical constants part, ash value should test total ash, water soluble ash, acid insoluble ash and sulphated ash. The extractive values that are ethanol soluble extractive, water soluble extractive, determination of volatile oil in drug, determination of crude fibre content, determination of loss on drying, determination of foaming Index should be done in triplicate to avoid an error of results (World Health Organization, 1998).

3)      In this study, almost figures might not clear enough and there are no scale beside each picture to confirm any sizes such as the leaves, stomata, epidermal cells, xylem and phloem that they reported.

The strength of this study is that study of the habitat, general characters of plant, their gross, whole and powdered structures, and also chemistry of the constituents are include in the pharmacognostic study is very important. These places down parameters for standardization and authentication of medicinal plants and will prevent adulteration and substitution. These may be useful to therapeutics in the future also.

References

1.      Chanda, S. (2014). Importance of pharmacognostic study of medicinal plants: An overview. Journal of Pharmacognoscy and Phytochemistry, 2(5), 69- 73.

2.      Pawar, C.R., Kadtan, R.B., Gaikwad, A.A., & Kadtan, D.B. (2011). PHARMACOGNOSTICAL AND PHYSIO-CHEMICAL STANDARDIZATION OF CAESALPINIA PULCHERRIMA. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN PHARMACY AND CHEMISTRY, 1(4), 998- 1002.

3.      World Health Organization. (1998). Quality control methods for medicinal plant materials. Malta: WHO Press.