{"id":7635,"date":"2026-08-27T12:02:25","date_gmt":"2026-08-27T06:32:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=7635"},"modified":"2026-08-27T12:42:19","modified_gmt":"2026-08-27T07:12:19","slug":"neelakurinji","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/neelakurinji\/","title":{"rendered":"Neelakurinji"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><b>Neelakurinji Latest News<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Recently, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) has requested the National Green Tribunal to direct Keralam, Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka to submit an annual plan of operation incorporating a conservation action plan for\u00a0 Neelakurinji (Strobilanthes kunthiana).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>About Neelakurinji<\/b><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is the purplish <\/span><b>flowering shrub which blooms once in 12 years.<\/b><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It belongs to the <\/span><b>Acanthaceae family<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and was first scientifically described in the nineteenth century by Nees von Esenbeck.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is <\/span><b>semelparous <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">with showy synchronous blooming and fruiting at every 12 years at the end of the life cycle, which has been reported since 1832.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><b>Habitat:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> It is seen only in the <\/span><b>high-altitude shola grassland ecosystems<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> of five mountain landscapes of southwest India at an elevation of 1,340\u20132,600 m.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><b>Distribution:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Neelakurinji Flowers <\/span><b>occur only in India,<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> confined to five mountain landscapes of the Western and Eastern Ghats.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><b>Population Distribution:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Consists of 34 subpopulations across 14 ecoregions, with 33 in the Western Ghats and one in the Eastern Ghats.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><b>Conservation Status:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Listed as <\/span><b>Vulnerable under IUCN Red List<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Criteria A2c due to approximately 40% habitat loss.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><b>Cultural significance<\/b>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/nilgiri-hills\/\" target=\"_blank\">Nilgiri Hills<\/a><\/strong> (Literally meaning the blue mountains), got their name from the <\/span><b>blue flowers of Neelakurinji.<\/b><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The <\/span><b>Paliyan tribes<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (in Tamil Nadu) use it as a reference to <\/span><b>calculate their age.<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Threats:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> It is threatened mainly due to its fragile habitat in the montane high altitude grasslands that has been under pressure of conversion for <\/span><b>tea and softwood plantations, and urbanization.<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Neelakurinji is the purplish flowering shrub which blooms once in 12 years. Read more about Neelakurinji, Habitat, Distribution, Latest News.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":121297,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[9823],"class_list":["post-7635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","tag-neelakurinji","no-featured-image-padding"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7635"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7635\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":121321,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7635\/revisions\/121321"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}