Indian calamus (Acorus calamus L.): not a tetraploid

Abstract

Acorus calamus Linn. (family Araceae), commonly known as sweet flag or 'Bach' in India, is an important medicinal and aromatic plant. In the present study, different accessions across the country were screened for ploidy status and possible correlation with β-asarone content. Most of the accessions were triploids with β-asarone content varying from 82.0 to 89.4% in their oil, except for only one triploid accession having 11.55% β-asarone content. Two diploid populations were also detected from western Himalayas which had low β-asarone contents of 11.67 and 7.39% respectively. The earlier notion that high β-asarone content in the Indian calamus was due to its tetraploid status does not hold true cytologically. Amongst phenotypic characters, lower specific leaf weight values, early autumn senescence and late emergence in spring in a population can be indicators for locating accessions with low β-asarone contents.