''Drimia nagarjunae'' is a

species In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate s ...

flowering plant Flowering plants are plants that bear flowers and fruits, and form the clade Angiospermae (), commonly called angiosperms. The term "angiosperm" is derived from the Greek words ('container, vessel') and ('seed'), and refers to those plants th ...

in the family Asparagaceae, subfamily Scilloideae. It was included in '' Drimia indica'', but is accepted as a separate species. It is distributed in south India.

Taxonomy

''Drimia nagarjunae'' was first described, as ''Urginea nagarjunae'' by Hemadri and Swahari in 1982. They noted that it had been previously mistaken for '' Drimia indica'', but differed in having a thicker scape, flowers closer together in the

inflorescence An inflorescence is a group or cluster of flowers arranged on a Plant stem, stem that is composed of a main branch or a complicated arrangement of branches. Morphology (biology), Morphologically, it is the modified part of the shoot of sperma ...

and with

tepal A tepal is one of the outer parts of a flower (collectively the perianth). The term is used when these parts cannot easily be classified as either sepals or petals. This may be because the parts of the perianth are undifferentiated (i.e. of very ...

s that are not reflexed. The specific epithet refers to

Nagarjunakonda Nagarjunakonda (IAST: Nāgārjunikoṇḍa, meaning Nagarjuna Hill) is a historical town, now an island located near Nagarjuna Sagar in Palnadu district of the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, near the state border with Telangana. It is one o ...

, near

Nagarjuna Sagar Dam Nagarjuna Sagar Dam is a masonry dam across the Krishna River at Nagarjuna Sagar which straddles the border between Nalgonda district in Telangana and Palnadu district in Andhra Pradesh. The dam provides irrigation water to the Nalgonda, Sur ...

where the bulb is first identified; bulbs of the new species had been collected in a "medico-ethnobotanical survey". Hemadri and Swahari's differentiation of ''D. nagarjunae'' from ''D. indica'' was initially not accepted, but it is now considered to be a separate species.

References

Scilloideae Endemic flora of India (region) {{Asparagaceae-stub