Nelumno nucifera open flower - botanic garden adelaide2

The flora of India is one of the richest in the world due to the wide range of climate, topology and habitat in the country. There are estimated to be over 18,000 species of flowering plants in India, which constitute some 6-7 percent of the total plant species in the world. India is home to more than 50,000 species of plants, including a variety of

endemics Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found else ...

. The use of plants as a source of medicines has been an integral part of life in India from the earliest times. There are more than 3000 Indian plant species officially documented as possessing into eight main floristic regions :

Western Himalayas The Western Himalayas refers to the western half of the Himalayas, in northern Pakistan and northwestern India. It is also known as the Punjab Himalayas. Four of the five tributaries of the Indus River in Punjab (Beas, Chenab, Jhelum, and Ravi) ...

Eastern Himalayas ] The Eastern Himalayas extend from eastern Nepal across Northeast India, Bhutan, the Tibet Autonomous Region to Yunnan in China and northern Myanmar. The climate of this region is influenced by the monsoon of South Asia from June to September. ...

Assam Assam (; ) is a state in northeastern India, south of the eastern Himalayas along the Brahmaputra and Barak River valleys. Assam covers an area of . The state is bordered by Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh to the north; Nagaland and Manipur ...

, Indus plain,

Ganges The Ganges ( ) (in India: Ganga ( ); in Bangladesh: Padma ( )). "The Ganges Basin, known in India as the Ganga and in Bangladesh as the Padma, is an international river to which India, Bangladesh, Nepal and China are the riparian states." is ...

plain, the

Deccan The large Deccan Plateau in southern India is located between the Western Ghats and the Eastern Ghats, and is loosely defined as the peninsular region between these ranges that is south of the Narmada river. To the north, it is bounded by the ...

Malabar Malabar may refer to the following: People * Malabars, people originating from the Malabar region of India * Malbars or Malabars, people of Tamil origin in Réunion Places * Malabar Coast, or Malabar, a region of the southwestern shoreline o ...

and the

Andaman Islands The Andaman Islands () are an archipelago in the northeastern Indian Ocean about southwest off the coasts of Myanmar's Ayeyarwady Region. Together with the Nicobar Islands to their south, the Andamans serve as a maritime boundary between th ...

Forests and wildlife resources

Mudumalai Wildlife Reserve Nilgiris TN India (1)

In 1992, around 7,43,534 km² of land in the country was under forests of which 92 percent belongs to the government. Only 22.7 percent is forested compared to the recommended 33 percent of the National Forest Policy Resolution 1952. The majority of it are broad-leaved

deciduous In the fields of horticulture and Botany, the term ''deciduous'' () means "falling off at maturity" and "tending to fall off", in reference to trees and shrubs that seasonally shed leaves, usually in the autumn; to the shedding of petals, ...

trees which comprise one-sixth '' sal'' and one-tenth

teak Teak (''Tectona grandis'') is a tropical hardwood tree species in the family Lamiaceae. It is a large, deciduous tree that occurs in mixed hardwood forests. ''Tectona grandis'' has small, fragrant white flowers arranged in dense clusters ( pan ...

. Coniferous types are found in the northern high altitude regions and comprise

pine A pine is any conifer tree or shrub in the genus ''Pinus'' () of the family Pinaceae. ''Pinus'' is the sole genus in the subfamily Pinoideae. The World Flora Online created by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and Missouri Botanical Garden accep ...

s, junipers and '' deodars''. India's

forest cover Forest cover is the amount of forest that covers a particular area of land. It may be measured as relative (in percent) or absolute (in square kilometres/square miles). Around a third of the world's surface is covered with forest, with closed-canop ...

ranges from the

tropical rainforest Tropical rainforests are rainforests that occur in areas of tropical rainforest climate in which there is no dry season – all months have an average precipitation of at least 60 mm – and may also be referred to as ''lowland equatori ...

of the

, Western Ghats, and

Northeast India , native_name_lang = mni , settlement_type = , image_skyline = , image_alt = , image_caption = , motto = , image_map = Northeast india.png , ...

to the

coniferous forest Conifers are a group of cone-bearing seed plants, a subset of gymnosperms. Scientifically, they make up the division Pinophyta (), also known as Coniferophyta () or Coniferae. The division contains a single extant class, Pinopsida. All exta ...

of the Himalaya. Between these extremes lie the sal-dominated moist deciduous forest of eastern India;

-dominated dry deciduous forest of central and southern India; and the babul-dominated

thorn forest A thorn forest is a dense scrubland with vegetation characteristic of dry subtropical and warm temperate areas with a seasonal rainfall averaging . Regions Africa Is present in the southwest of Africa with smaller areas in other places of Africa. ...

of the central Deccan and western Gangetic plain. Pine, fir, spruce, cedar, larch and cypress are the timber-yielding plants of which several also occur widely in the hilly regions of India

References

SPECIES CHECKLIST: Species Diversity in India
ENVIS Centre: Wildlife & Protected Areas (Secondary Database);

Wildlife Institute of India The Wildlife Institute of India (WII) is an autonomous natural resource service institution established in 1982 under the Ministry of Environment Forest and Climate change, Government of India. WII carries out wildlife research in areas of stu ...

(WII)
ENVIS Centre: Wildlife & Protected Areas (Secondary Database)

(WII)
Free EBOOK: Special Habitats and Threatened Plants of India

(WII)
ENVIS Centre on Conservation of Ecological Heritage and Sacred Sights of India
; ENVIS; C.P.R. Environmental Education Centre is a Centre of Excellence of the Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India.

External links

List of Indian medicinal plants
on the
Biodiversity of India
' website. A list of 932 commercially traded Indian medicinal plants (as per the ENVIS-FRLHT database) and their taxonomic status.
Hooker, J. D. Flora of British India Volume 1Hooker, J. D. Flora of British India Volume 2Hooker, J. D. Flora of British India Volume 3Hooker, J. D. Flora of British India Volume 4Hooker, J. D. Flora of British India Volume 5Hooker, J. D. Flora of British India Volume 6
{{DEFAULTSORT:Flora Of India

Forests and wildlife resources

See also

References

External links