Rare Endemic and Threatened Plants of Western Ghats

Contents: Foreword. Preface. 1. Western Ghats: Global biodiversity hot spot. 2. History of floristic explorations in the Western Ghats. 3. Central and southern Western Ghats, a treasure house of endemic flowering plants. 4. Recent plant discoveries. 5. Orchids. 6. Scapigerous balsams. 7. Medicinal, wild edibles and wild relatives of crop plants. 8. Vegetation. 9. West coast tropical evergreen forests. 10. West coast tropical semi-evergreen forests. 11. Southern moist mixed deciduous forests. 12. Southern montane wet temperate forests. 13. Southern wet montane grasslands. 14. Rare endemic and threatened plants details. References. Index.

The mountainous Western Ghats (WG that comes to just 6% of the total land area of India, holds more than 30% of India’s biodiversity and several other specialties. However, WG qualifies unfortunately to be an under explored region even in the case of higher plant species. The terrain is one of the 10 "Hottest biodiversity hotspots'' of the world, apart from it being one of the 34 global biodiversity hotspots and serving a critical role in sequestration of carbon emission of India. Many factors continue to threaten the survival of endangered plants of this region. This book has documented 2113 flowering plants from Wayanad district alone including 496 endemic plants and contains a detailed account of 230 selected RET plant species of Western Ghats. The high quality colour photos of each plant species given in this book will help the readers in the proper identification of plants in the field.