Abstract:
Nowadays consumption of herbal medicines is widespread and has increased dramatically. The main
supply of herbal material for ayurvedic drug preparations is from the wild. It causes inherent
problems: misidentification, phenotypic variability, extract variability and adulteration. The
pharmacognostic evaluation is the preliminary step in the standardization of crude drugs which
provides valuable information in morphology and physical characteristics, and the purity and quality
of the plant drugs.
Albizia lebbeck (Sinhala- Mara, Sanskrit-Mahari, Hindi- Shiris ) is a South Asian medicinal plant
widely cultivated and naturalized in tropical and subtropical regions. In Sri Lanka many substitute
plants are used due to the restricted distribution which has caused ambiguity in utilizing accurate plant
material. The present study focuses on exploring the use of A. lebbeck and its substitutes in ayurvedic
drug preparations with reference to their morphological and pharmacognostic similarity.
A questionnaire survey was carried out, using a randomly selected sample population of 100, to
determine the use of substitute plants and it revealed that three plants in the subfamily Mimosodeae,
Albizia odoratissimma (Sinhala-Suriya mara), Adenanthera pavonina (Sinhala-Madatiya) and
Samanea saman (Sinhala-Pare mara) are used widely in Sri Lanka, whereas A. odoratissima is being
predominantly used in drug preparations. Specimens of the above plants were collected from the
natural habitats and indentified using the authenticated specimens at the National Herbarium.
Methanolic bark extracts of A. odoratissimma and A. pavonina were subjected to a preliminary
phyotochemical screening to detect the different secondary metabolites, such as carbohydrates,
proteins, amino acids, glycosides, and alkaloids. Further, phytochemical screening was carried out
using solvents; ethyl acetate, methanol and water. Thin Layer Chromatography was performed on
each extract, for the qualitative and quantitative analysis. High yield was obtained from methanolic
extracts that indicated the presence of polar compounds. Chromatographic properties have showed the
variation of chemical profiles in these two bark extracts. These compounds will be characterized by
fractional analysis, and their distributional patterns in these plant species will be compared to evaluate
the effectiveness as substitutes to A. lebbeck.
