Kewra: A 24-Million-Year-Old Living Fossil

1.1 What are its names?

Kewra, kewda, kevda and ketki are names of one fragrant plant. Its English name is screwpine. It belongs to the family Pandanaceae, in the order Pandanales. A family is a group of related plants.

Books use more than one botanical name. The Ganjam GI file calls it Pandanus fascicularis. The same file’s history notes use Pandanus odoratissimus. Exam questions often use the second name.

1.2 What does the plant look like?

It is a bushy shrub and a dominant plant of India’s coastal vegetation. It has thick stilt roots. Its long leaves carry prickly spines along the edges and mid-ribs.

Male and female flowers grow on different plants. The male spike is the fragrant one. The female spike has no scent.

1.3 What is kewra used for?

Kewra essence flavours sweets and goes into perfumes. It is also used in traditional medicine and religious rituals. The essential oil comes from the male flowers.

2.1 Who found them?

Scientists at the Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeosciences (BSIP) did. BSIP is in Lucknow. Birbal Sahni founded it as the Institute of Palaeobotany. Palaeosciences means the study of ancient life and old environments.

The team was led by Harshita Bhatia and Gaurav Srivastava. They published the work in the journal Geobios. Press reports on it are dated 15 July 2026.

2.2 Where were they found?

The team recovered four exceptionally preserved fossil leaves. They came from the Tikak Parbat Formation in the Makum Coalfield of Assam. A formation is a named layer of rock. A coalfield is an area with coal beds.

2.3 What did the leaves show?

The leaves have long sword-shaped blades, parallel veins and prickly margins. These match modern kewra. The team compared the fossils with herbarium specimens, botanical databases and fossil records from other places. A herbarium is a library of dried plants.

The analysis confirmed that the fossils belong to the Pandanaceae family. Fossils of this group are rare.

3.1 What are the two numbers?

The fossil leaves are at least 24 million years old. The wider family is much older. Earlier fossils from Europe and North America show its ancestors spread across the Northern Hemisphere 85 to 66 million years ago.

Source: press reports on the 2026 BSIP study.

3.2 What changed in between?

World temperatures began to fall around 34 million years ago. The plants slowly vanished from many regions. They survived mainly in tropical places.

4.1 What is a refuge?

A refuge is a place where a group of living things survives while it dies out elsewhere. The press reports say India acted as a safe refuge for ancient tropical plants. They say India preserved such lineages through major climate change.

4.2 What gap does the find fill?

The new fossils connect two sets of records. The older ones are from Europe and North America. The younger ones are from tropical Asia and Australia. The Assam leaves sit in the middle of that story.

4.3 Is kewra a 'living fossil'?

The phrase is informal. A living fossil is a living group that looks much like its fossil past. Here it points to how closely the fossil leaves match kewra. It does not mean the species is unchanged.

5.1 Where does kewra grow?

It grows abundantly along the Odisha coast. The main belt lies on the Ganjam coast, between the Rushikulya and Bahuda rivers. The belt is about 45 km north to south and 15 km east to west, along the Bay of Bengal. The plants are good soil binders.

The GI file counts about 140 distillery units in Ganjam. Distillation is how the scented water and oil are drawn out of the flowers.

5.2 What is its GI tag?

A GI, or Geographical Indication, tag shows that a product belongs to a place. Ganjam Kewda Flower is a registered GI. Its area is Odisha and its class is 31, which is agriculture.

• Applicant: Ganjam Kewda Development Trust.
• Certificate date: 19 March 2012.
• Valid up to: 23 December 2030.

5.3 Is kewra an old plant in culture too?

Yes. The GI file says the plant, as ketki, is praised in many Sanskrit writings, Puranic and Classical. It also says Pandanus odoratissimus appeared in religious, social and language contexts since ancient times.

6.1 Which facts are asked most?

• Who: BSIP, Lucknow, not a bigger body such as ICMR or CSIR.
• Where: Makum Coalfield, Assam.
• Age: at least 24 million years.
• Family: Pandanaceae.
• Journal: Geobios.

6.2 Which mix-ups come up?

• 24 against 85 to 66: leaf age against the older family fossils.
• Role of India: a refuge, not the place where the family began.
• Fossil against species: the leaves match kewra and share its family.