The morphological features of H. telephioides were studied both in fresh and herbarium materials. Parts of the fresh material were stored in 70% alcohol–water solution for later anatomical procedures. These consisted in hand-made cross section of stem, leaf,sepal, petal, filament, ovary and style. Also paradermal hand-made sections of adaxial and abaxial surface of the leaf were taken with razor blade. The sections were stained in 1% Alcian blue (Sigma) and 1% Safranine O (Sigma), in a ratio 3/2 (Davis and Barnett, 1997). The sections were kept about 5 min in the dye. Semi-permanent slides were mounded using glycerin–gelatine (Jensen, 1962). The
structural investigations of vegetative and reproductive parts of H. telephioides were made using Olympus BX22 light microscopy. Photomicrographs were taken using Olympus BX51 light microscopy coupled with Olympus DP70 digital camera. Stomatal index was calculated according to the study of Meidner and Mansifield (1968).