Alternative medicinal source is a hot issue within medicine community now a days due to various side effects of allotropic drugs; most importantly the multidrug resistance phenomena. Medicinal plants provide an attractive and effective alternative to modern synthetic drugs as they contain different types of bioactive compounds, having great potential in treatment of various diseases. The present study deals with identification of micromorphological characteristics of 10 ethnomedicinally important plants of Northern Pakistan, that is, Aster himalaicus C. B. Clarke, Artemisia maritima (Berg.) Wellkomm, Isodon rugosus (Wall. ex Benth.), Myricaria squamosal Desv, Pedicularis groenlandica Retz. Polygonum aviculare L, Salvia himmelbauer E. Peter, Swertia kingie Hook. f., Tanacetum dolichophyllum (Kitam) Kitam, Verbascum epixanthinum Boiss. & Heldr. as potential source for pharmaceutical industry. The characters studied were shape and size of pollen, polar diameter and equatorial diameter, epidermal cell shape and size, stomata width and length, trichome shapes, and type. Most of the species had tricolporate pollen type but hexacolporate pollen was also observed in Isodon rugosus, Polygonum aviculare, Salvia himmelbauer. Different types of exine sculpturing observed were foveolate, scabrate, lophate, regular, steriate, and alveolate. Minimum equatorial diameter was noted in Tanacetum dolichophyllum (12.4 μm) and maximum in Myricaria squamosal (20.9 μm). Shape of epidermis cell ranged from rectangular and irregular, polygonal and pentagonal. Different types of stomata like anisocytic, actinocytic, paracytic, and diacytic were noticed. Variations in microscopic characters observed in the current study have great potential to be used as identification tools by the taxonomists for further studies.

中文翻译：

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SEM和LM技术对药用植物花粉形态和叶表皮解剖的系统意义

由于同素异形药物的各种副作用，替代药物来源是当今医学界的一个热门问题。最重要的是多药耐药现象。药用植物提供了现代合成药物的一种有吸引力且有效的替代方法，因为它们含有不同类型的生物活性化合物，在治疗各种疾病方面具有巨大潜力。本研究涉及鉴定巴基斯坦北部的10种具有民族学意义的重要植物的微形态特征，即翠菊紫C CB Clarke，海蒿（Berg。）Wellkomm，Isodon rugosus（Wall。ex Benth。），Myricaria squamosal Desv，Pedicularis groenlandica雷兹虎杖L，丹参himmelbauer E.彼得，Swertia kingie钩。f。，Tanacetum dolichophyllum（Kitam），Kitam，艾伯塔角表皮黄柏。＆Heldr。作为制药行业的潜在来源。研究的特征是花粉的形状和大小，极直径和赤道直径，表皮细胞形状和大小，气孔宽度和长度，毛状体形状和类型。大部分品种有三孔花粉型，但也有人hexacolporate花粉香茶rugosus，萹蓄，丹参himmelbauer。观察到的不同类型的外壁雕刻是叶状，sc状，叶状，规则状，直形和肺泡状。最小赤道直径在小叶艾菊（12.4μm）中，最大的在Myricaria squamosal中（20.9μm）。表皮细胞的形状范围为矩形和不规则形，多边形和五边形。注意到了不同类型的气孔，如异种，气胞，副胞和二酰基。在当前研究中观察到的微观特征的变化具有巨大的潜力，可以被分类学家用作进一步研究的鉴定工具。