First of its kind raspberry in Nepal

A new species of ainselu, the wild raspberry native to the subcontinent and Southeast Asia, has been discovered in Nepal. It is the second flowering plant to be discovered in the country in 2021.  

Samples of the plant were collected from Shivapuri-Nagarjun National Park by botanical enthusiast La Dorchee Sherpa and researchers Maan Bahadur Rokaya and Sajan Subedi.

Coined Rubus dorcheae after Dorchee Sherpa, the species was introduced in Rokaya and Subedi's academic article Rubus dorcheae (Rosaceae), A New Species from Central Nepal published on 13 July in the botany journal Phytotaxa. 

Ainselu belongs to the genus Rubus, which has 760 species across the world except for some countries in the South American and African continents. 

Among the 32 species found in Nepal, the evergreen Himalayan creeping bramble (Rubus nepalensis) known as Bhui ainselu in Nepali, is indigenous to the Himalayan nation. Meanwhile, the wild Rubus ellipticus ainselu plant that bears clustered yellow fruit each April is more widespread across the country.

Given his interest in botany and Nepal’s diverse flora, La Dorchee Sherpa initially trained under notated Nepali naturalist Tritha Bahadur Shrestha despite graduating with a business degree. 

Since then, over the past few years, Sherpa has been travelling within the Kathmandu Valley as well as across the country identifying and photographing Nepal’s flora. He spends months at a time researching the plants he has photographed, and has helped many botanists and academicians in their study.

The Rubus dorcheae plant is 10m tall, and flowers from August, bearing fruit in the months of October and November. Samples of the plant were first collected from Shivapuri in 2018 at an altitude of 1,930m. After initial studies concluded the species to be the first of its kind, additional samples were then collected in 2019 and 2020.

The researchers compared the collected samples with the published botanical works of other Rubus species found in Nepal, Bhutan, China and India. They also studied samples of herbariums available at the Natural History Museum in London, the Royal Botanical Gardens in Edinburgh, Scotland, the National Herbarium and Botanical Laboratory in Godavari, the University of Tokyo in Japan, and the Central Department of Botany.

Researchers found the specimen collected from Shivapuri to be similar to the Rubus kumaonensis, which is native to Nepal and Tibet, and the Himalayan blackberry Rubus rugosas. They then compared the height, shape and texture of the leaves, as well as sepal and petal of the flowers of the new sample and the two species. 

The differences in height and the size of the leaves of plant samples do not have much bearing when studying potential new plant species as they typically vary even for the same species depending on their geographic location. However, the botanists found other significant differences confirming that the new ainselu species was the first of its kind.

The article published in the journal Phytotaxa provides an in-depth study of the new plant, including detailed botanical sketches of their smallest parts. And while the two researchers and Sherpa do a commendable job, an extended study into the DNA would have added to it.

In fact, one of the authors of the article, ecologist Maan Bahadur Rokaya, is well placed to conduct the DNA study at the Institute of Botany of the Czech Academy of Sciences, where he is a researcher. 

A DNA study would have revealed the internal differences between the different Rubus species whereas the morphological study is limited to identifying external variations. Such a detailed research would have served as a reference and resource for other botanists in the future.

Translated by Shristi Karki from the Himal Khabar.