ABSTRACT
Janaki joined the Centre for Advanced Studies (CAS) in Botany, University of Madras, in November 1971, at the invitation of T. S. Sadasivan. Her return to Madras to the metamorphosed UBL, her alma mater, was like homecoming after a prolonged scientific pilgrimage. Interestingly, it also signalled a return to her first love, the Saccharum. Always on the lookout for similitudes, Janaki spoke of how there was a great resemblance between the forests of Kerala and the west coast of India, with those of Assam; Assam was the most important centre of origin of most of the cultivated plants in South Asia and also a region of active speciation as shown by genetic analysis of its plants. Further, most of the medicinal plants came from the Himalayan region. She invoked the Charaka Samhita to describe how the forest-dwelling sages had discovered the use of medicinal plants through their contact with tribals or forest dwellers, who at one point were the original inhabitants of large stretches of land. In December 1971, the Indian National Science Academy (INSA) sanctioned and funded a project, ‘Ethnobotanical Studies of South Indian Tribes’ to be based at the Field Research Laboratory in Maduravoyal, with Janaki as Principal Investigator.
