Angiosperms, tree species in tropical forests of southern Eastern Ghats, Tamil Nadu, India

Abstract

We provide a list of tree species enumerated from a total of 60 ha area sampled in the tropical forests of southern Eastern Ghats, Tamil Nadu, India. A total of 272 tree species (Ā 30 cm girth at breast height) representing 181 genera and 62 families were recorded. Euphorbiaceae with 25 species was the most speciose family, followed by Moraceae (17 species), Rubiaceae (17), Rutaceae (14) and Lauraceae (12). At the generic level, Ficus dominated with 12 species, followed by Diospyros (9), Acacia (6), Terminalia (6) and Grewia (5). Anthropogenic activities such as hill cultivation, construction of dams, roads, buildings, etc. affect the already fragmented southern Eastern Ghats, and underline the need for effective conservation measures.

Leaf classes, foliar phenology and life forms of selected woody species from the tropical forests of central and southern Eastern Ghats, India

“…Of these, 6 that were assigned evergreen by us were characterized brevideciduous in the earlier study. However, Haldina cordifolia, observed to be deciduous in the present study was marked as evergreen by Pragasan and Parthasarathy (2009);Newton (1988) in central Indian highlands, Mishra et al (2006) in Similipal biosphere reserve, Orissa and Desai and Patel (2010) in Satlasana range forest, north Gujarat observed H. cordifolia as deciduous. Likewise, in Ficus drupacea, leaf flushing was observed from January to midMay in one season whereas the same was observed during September to December in the next season in the same site in Coorg of Western Ghats (Patel, 1997) and the same species has been marked as brevi-deciduous by Pragasan Table 4.…”

“…The degree of gradient of deciduousness is ascertained only by finer field observations . Not surprisingly, we found that our study assigned a different phenology to 15 species (Table 4) in comparison with Pragasan and Parthasarathy (2009). Of these, 6 that were assigned evergreen by us were characterized brevideciduous in the earlier study.…”

“…Out of these 10 species, 5 are from southern Eastern Ghats, 4 are from central Eastern Ghats, 1 species (Hiptage benghalensis) occurs both in southern as well as central Eastern Ghats. Pragasan and Parthasarathy (2009) reported 272 species from tropical forests of southern Eastern Ghats of Tamil Nadu. The present checklist covers only 134 species from southern Eastern Ghats; however 40 species were not listed in that earlier study (Table 2).…”

“…The Eastern Ghats, falling under tropical monsoon climate, receives rainfall from both south-west monsoon and north-east retreating monsoon. The natural vegetation, though primarily dominated by tropical deciduous species, may be grouped into Evergreen forests, Tropical semi-evergreen forests, Tropical moist deciduous forests, Dry deciduous forests, Tropical dry evergreen forests and Dry evergreen scrubs (Champion and Seth 1968;Legris and Meher-Homji 1984;Pragasan and Parthasarathy 2009). …”

“…The study sites were selected based on the floristic composition and priority of conservation (Kadavul and Parthasarathy. 1999a, b;Jayakumar et al 2002;Natarajan et al 2004;Soosairaj et al 2004Soosairaj et al , 2007Reddy et al 2008;Pragasan and Parthasarathy 2009). Out of 38 sites, 30 sites are from the disjunct hillocks of the southern Eastern Ghats and 8 sites from the more or less contiguous Nallamalai hills of central Eastern Ghats representative of the major vegetation types of the region (Reddy et al 2008).…”