Pharmacognosy Journal | June 2011 | Vol 3 | Issue 22 29 orIgInal artIcle PHcog J. *Address for correspondence: E-mail: arirudran_1975@yahoo.com, saraswathy20002004@ gmail.com DOI: 10.5530/pj.2011.22.6 Taiwan [1,2,3,4,7,21] and traditionally used for reducing toxicity, healing urine tract infammation. [8] MATERIALS AND METHODS Fresh plant materials were collected from Tamilnadu and identifed with the help of The Flora of Presidency of Madras [9,10] and a dried specimen (No: 00628) was deposited in museum of CSMDRIA Chennai. For microscopic study properly washed plant material was cut into desirable size and preserved in FAA, free hand sections were taken stained with the reagents used in pharmacognosy studies. Drawings were made with the help of camera lucida. [11, 22] Powder of the dried whole plant of Ruellia tuberosa L. was used for chemical analysis: physicochemical studies like total ash, acid insoluble ash, water-soluble ash, alkalinity of water soluble ash content and loss on drying at 105ºC, crude fber, water soluble extractive and alcohol soluble extractive were carried out as per WHO guidelines. [12] Preliminary phytochemical tests were done as per the standard methods. [13,14,15] The fuorescence behaviour of the powdered drug in the day light and ultraviolet light were done by moistening the powder in different solution and viewing under the light of different wavelengths in a UV-chamber. [10,16] The air dried and coarse powder of whole Pharmacognostic and Preliminary Phytochemical Studies on Ruellia tuberosa L. (Whole plant) B Arirudran* 1 , A Saraswathy 2 , Vijayalakshmi Krishnamurthy 3 1,2 Captain Srinivasa Murti Drug Research Institute for Ayurveda (CCRAS), Anna Hospital Campus, Arumbakkam, Chennai, India-106. 3 Department of Biochemistry, Bharadhi Women’s college affiliated to University of Madras, Chennai, India-108. aBStract Ruellia tuberoa l. of acanthaceae family is a Minnie root medicinal, tropical plant widely distributed in south east asia. In folk medicine, it has been used as diuretic, antidiabetic, antipyretic, analgesic, anti-hypersensitive, thirst-quenching, and antidotal agent. recently this plant has been incorporated as a component in an herbal drink in taiwan. However a very few chemical constituents and pharmacological activities have been reported for this species. as there is no pharmacognostic work reported on whole plant, the present investigation attempts to undertake to study the pharmacognostical and preliminary phytochemical studies along with HPTLC, fngerprinting analysis for whole plant of Ruellia tuberosa L. Preliminary organic analysis revealed the presence of tannin, favonoid, steroid, triterpnoid and phenol in different extracts respectively. Physiochemical studies revealed that total ash is 13.53%, acid insoluble ash is 2.36%, alcohol soluble extractive value is 7.67%, water soluble extractive value is 24.78% and loss on drying at 105°c is 11.29%. These specifc identities will be useful in identifcation and authentication of the raw drug. Key words: Ruellia tuberosa, Phytochemical studies, Pharmacognosy, HPtlc. INTRODUCTION Ruellia tuberosa L. (Pattaskai) belong to the family Acanthaceae, is a Minnie root, tropical perennial plant with a hairy quadrangular stem growing up to a height of 6.5 cm. The leaves are simple, opposite elliptic about 5 cm in length. The plant only fowers after the start of the rainy season. It has thick fnger like roots. The fower is bisexual and violet in colour. The capsule contain 7 to 8 seeds each burst and open with a bang when they get wet and the black seeds are hurdled away. The capsules are baton shaped and 3 cm in length and turn black with the age. Because of explosive behaviour of capsule name of the plant is Pattaskai in Tamil and cracker plant, blue bell, popping pod, waterkanon in English. This plant prefers semi shady moist condition. [5,6] Ruellia tuberosa L. is a tropical plant and widely distributed in South East Asia, in folk medicine, it has been used as diuretic, antidiabetic, antipyretic, analgesic, antihypertensive, thirst quenching, antinociceptive, anti- infammatory and antidotal agent. It has also recently been incorporated as a component in an herbal drink in