''Berberis asiatica'' (Indian or Asian barberry), is a species of

shrub A shrub or bush is a small to medium-sized perennial woody plant. Unlike herbaceous plants, shrubs have persistent woody stems above the ground. Shrubs can be either deciduous or evergreen. They are distinguished from trees by their multiple ...

, in the family Berberidaceae. It is native to the

Himalayas The Himalayas, or Himalaya ( ), is a mountain range in Asia, separating the plains of the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau. The range has some of the Earth's highest peaks, including the highest, Mount Everest. More than list of h ...

(East and West Himalaya), India (including

Himachal Pradesh Himachal Pradesh (; Sanskrit: ''himācāl prādes;'' "Snow-laden Mountain Province") is a States and union territories of India, state in the northern part of India. Situated in the Western Himalayas, it is one of the thirteen Indian Himalayan ...

region), Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal and Tibet. It is found in subtropical to temperate regions, and at altitudes of above sea level. ''B. asiatica'' is an upright, spiny and

glabrous Glabrousness () is the technical term for a lack of hair, down, setae, trichomes, or other such covering. A glabrous surface may be a natural characteristic of all or part of a plant or animal, or be due to loss because of a physical condition, ...

bush. It has blood-red coloured fruit. It was first published in Syst. Nat. 2: 13 in 1821. The name has been verified by

United States Department of Agriculture The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is an executive department of the United States federal government that aims to meet the needs of commercial farming and livestock food production, promotes agricultural trade and producti ...

and the

Agricultural Research Service The Agricultural Research Service (ARS) is the principal in-house research agency of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). ARS is one of four agencies in USDA's Research, Education and Economics mission area. ARS is charged with ext ...

on 2 January 2003. Its fruit has potential

nutraceutical Nutraceutical is a terminology evolved scientifically & also through marketing which is used to imply a pharmaceutical effect from plant extracts, compounds, food products which have efficacy and therapeutic influence on clinical outcomes and patien ...

values. Extracts from the fruit possesses a potential source of

polyphenolic Polyphenols () are a large family of naturally occurring phenols. They are abundant in plants and structurally diverse. Polyphenols include phenolic acids, flavonoids, tannic acid, and ellagitannin, some of which have been used historically as ...

, mainly

anthocyanin Anthocyanins (), also called anthocyans, are solubility, water-soluble vacuole, vacuolar pigments that, depending on their pH, may appear red, purple, blue, or black. In 1835, the German pharmacist Ludwig Clamor Marquart named a chemical compou ...

compounds, which can be used for treating inflammation diseases (Neag et al. 2018).

References

Other sources

* Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, India. 1988. The wealth of India: a dictionary of Indian raw materials and industrial products. Raw materials (revised edition). 2:114-117. * Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, India. 2000. The wealth of India: a dictionary of Indian raw materials and industrial products. First supplementary series (raw materials). New Delhi 1:135. * Grierson, A. J. C. & D. J. Long. 1984-. Flora of Bhutan including a record of plants from Sikkim. * Hara, H. et al. 1978–1982. An enumeration of the flowering plants of Nepal. * Huxley, A., ed. 1992. The new Royal Horticultural Society dictionary of gardening * Sharma, B. D. et al., eds. 1993-. Flora of India. * Walters, S. M. et al., eds. 1986–2000. European garden flora. asiatica Flora of Tibet Flora of the Indian subcontinent Flora of Myanmar Plants described in 1821 {{Berberidaceae-stub