Question

Which of the following plants is known as 'Sorrow of Kashmir'?
(a)Dryopteris
(b)Salvinia
(c)Equisetum
(d)Adiantum

Answer 1

Hint Sorrow of Kashmir is the common name given to a water fern. It has uncontrollable growth. It is an aquatic fern that has both perrenial annual species.

Complete answer:
The plant Salvinia is called the 'Sorrow of Kashmir'. Salvinia refers to an aquatic fern. Salvinia is a genus in the family Salviniaceae. It is named in honor of Anton Maria Salvini. Watermoss is a common name for Salvinia. The plant contains a floating stem with two rows of large green leaves on the upper surface and branched leaf roots on the lower surface. This has a predominant growth in Kashmir. So, it is called Sorrow of Kashmir. It has uncontrollable growth. This leads to spreading on the surface of the water body, leading to the cutting off oxygen and reduced sunlight supply to the under the Aquatic surface. This leads to suffocation of the aquatic animals.

Additional Information:
-Salvinia has small, floating aquatics with creeping stems, branched, bearing hairs on the leaf surface papillae but no true roots.
-Leaves are in trimerous whorls, with two leaves green, sessile or short-petioled, flat, entire, and floating, and one leaf finely dissected, petiolate, rootlike, and pendant.
-Submerged leaves bearing sori that are surrounded by basifixed membranous indusia.

So, the correct answer is 'Salvinia'.

Note:
-Dryopteris is commonly known as wood ferns, male ferns, or buckler ferns, etc. It is a fern genus in the family Dryopteridaceae. There are about 300-400 species in the genus.
-Equisetum is a living fossil. It is the only living genus of the entire subclass Equisetinae. They were much more diverse and dominated the understorey of late Paleozoic forests over 100 million years.
-Adiantum, the maidenhair fern, is a genus of about 250 species of ferns in the subfamily Vittarioideae. The genus name comes from Greek, meaning unwetted, referring to the fronds’ ability to shed water without becoming wet.