Monday, 12 October 2026

Rauvolfia verticillata (Lour.) Baill.

Rauvolfia verticillata (Lour.) Baill.

raau-FO-feeah -- named in honour of Leonhard Rauwolf [↗], German physician, botanist, and traveller ... Dave's Botanary
ver-ti-si-LAH-tuh -- referring to a whorl ... Dave's Botanary
commonly known as: dense-flowered snakeroot • Kannada: ಕಳ್ಳಿ kalli, ಪಾತಾಳಗರುಡಿ patala garudi • Khasi: dieng-ja-soh-korblang, dieng-la-tyr-kai, dieng-la-tyrking, dieng-soh-bu-blang • Malayalam: കാട്ടമൽപ്പൊരി kattamalpori, വണ്ടുവര vanduvara • Marathi: अल्पगंधा alpagandha • Mizo: lei-tawt, piri-sawr • Tamil: பாரிசிருநிலா paarisirunila • Sylheti: dieng-lar-kei

known for / parts made use of: roots, leaves, bark & branches ... compiled from the web
botanical names: Rauvolfia verticillata (Lour.) Baill. ... homotypic synonyms: Rauvolfia chinensis (Hance) Hemsl. ... heterotypic synonyms: Rauvolfia densiflora (Wall.) Benth. ex Hook.f. • Tabernaemontana densiflora Wall. ... and more at POWO, retrieved October 11, 2026
TAXONOMIC HISTORY :: R. verticillata & R. densiflora
Although the French botanist Henri Ernest Baillon officially established the accepted name Rauvolfia verticillata (Lour.) Baill. back in 1895, Indian botanical literature traditionally classified local populations in the Western Ghats and northeast India as a distinct species named Rauvolfia densiflora. For more than a century, landmark regional references — including the Flora of British India and various state Floras — strictly maintained this separate designation. It wasn't until the advent of modern global digital databases like Kew's Plants of the World Online (POWO) and World Flora Online (WFO) that global specimens were definitively synthesized, formalising R. densiflora as a junior synonym of the older, widely distributed Asian species, R. verticillata.
Bibliography / etymology / notes
Links listed as references in the notes below, may not remain valid permanently. Portals / websites have a tendency to re-organize / revise their content, leading to change in URLs of pages in their site. Some sites may even close down at their own will. The bits about the languages of India mentioned below are merely some bare facts gathered from the internet; just enough to satisfy curiosity about "where" could the listed names be best prevalent in India. All English transliterated names to be taken sensu amplo.
~~~~~ ENGLISH ~~~~~
written and spoken widely, in most parts of India
dense-flowered snakeroot
~~~~~ KANNADA ~~~~~
written in: Kannada (ಕನ್ನಡ) ... spoken in: Karnataka
ಕಳ್ಳಿ kalli
ಪಾತಾಳಗರುಡಿ patala garudi
~~~~~ KHASI ~~~~~
written in: Latin (Khasi alphabet), Bengali-Assamese ... spoken in: Meghalaya, Assam
dieng-ja-soh-korblang, dieng-la-tyr-kai, dieng-la-tyrking, dieng-soh-bu-blang
  • for Rauvolfia densiflora (Wall.) Benth. ex Hook.f. ... U N Kanjilal, P C Kanjilal, A Das, R N De - Flora of Assam - Vol III
~~~~~ MALAYALAM ~~~~~
written in: Malayalam (മലയാളം) ... spoken in: Kerala, Lakshadweep
കാട്ടമൽപ്പൊരി kattamalpori
വണ്ടുവര vanduvara
~~~~~ MARATHI ~~~~~
written in: Devanagari (मराठी) ... spoken in: Maharashtra, Karnataka
अल्पगंधा alpagandha
  • Further Flowers of Sahyadri by Shrikant Ingalhalikar, the second among the three field guides to identify plants of northern Western Ghats of India, based on flowers
The Sanskrit rooted compound name अल्पगन्ध (Alpagandha), meaning "having little scent", in classical Sanskrit lexicons, refers explicitly to the "red lotus" (Nymphaea rubra or Nelumbo). In the modern botanical usage, the name was adapted by botanist Shrikant Ingalhalikar in his Sahyadri floral guides as a localized common name for R. verticillata. He likely crafted it as a clever rhyming play on its highly famous sister species, Sarpagandha (Rauvolfia serpentina), while indicating that it carries a milder or "lesser" profile compared to the dominant Indian snakeroot.
~~~~~ MIZO ~~~~~
written in: Latin, Bengali-Assamese ... spoken in: Mizoram ... other names for this language: Lushai, Duhlian
lei-tawt, piri-sawr
~~~~~ TAMIL ~~~~~
written in: Tamil (தமிழ்) ... spoken in: Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, Andaman & Nicobar Islands
பாரிசிருநிலா paarisirunila
~~~~~ SYLHETI ~~~~~
written in: Sylheti Nagri (ꠍꠤꠟꠐꠤ), Bengali–Assamese (সিলেটি), Latin ... spoken in: Barak Valley of Assam, northern parts of Tripura, Meghalaya, Manipur, Nagaland ... read more about its status as language / dialect in Wikipedia ... other names for this language: Sylhetti, Sileti, Siloti
dieng-lar-kei
  • for Rauvolfia densiflora (Wall.) Benth. ex Hook.f. ... U N Kanjilal, P C Kanjilal, A Das, R N De - Flora of Assam - Vol III
~~~~~ KNOWN DISTRIBUTION in INDIA ~~~~~
Assam, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Tamil Nadu
~~~~~ Created on: 09:42 11-10-2026 ¦ Last updated: 19:25 12-10-2026 (DD-MM-YYYY) ~~~~~
Apocynaceae Asclepiadaceae Asclepiadoideae perennial medicinal shrub "Rauvolfia verticillata" "Rauvolfia chinensis" "Rauvolfia densiflora" "Tabernaemontana densiflora" "dense-flowered snakeroot"
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Rauvolfia verticillata (Lour.) Baill.

raau-FO-feeah -- named in honour of Leonhard Rauwolf [↗] , German physician, botanist, and traveller ... Dave's Botanary ver-ti-si...

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