BOTANICAL IDENTIFICATION AND PHYSICOCHEMICAL INVESTIGATION OF LEAF OF NILI-NIRGUNDI (JUSTICIA GENDARUSSA) Research Article

The recent global resurgence of interest in herbal medicines has led to an increase in the demand for them. Commercialization of the manufacture of these medicines to meet this increasing demand has resulted in a decline in their quality, primarily due to a lack of adequate regulations pertaining to this sector of medicine. The need of the hour is to evolve a systematic approach for authentification of herbal plant and to develop well-designed methodologies for the standardization of herbal plant. Therefore, the present work deals with pharmacognostical study of a well-known folklore remedy for chronic rheumatism “Justicia gendarussa Burm”. The pharmacognostical studies are carried out in terms of morphology, qualitative and quantitative microscopy, powder study, ash values, extractive value and loss on drying. Hence, the present attempt was undertaken to investigate the pharmacognostical study of J. gendarussa.