Plant Diversity of Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra , India : A brief survey

the south and southwest (Figure 1). Gadchiroli district lies between 19°31’ & 19°45’ N latitude and 80°15’ & 80°45’ E longitude (Tiwari 1994). Total land cover of the study area is 14412.0 sq. km. Out of which, nearly 78.4% (i.e.11694.0 sq. km. ) is covered by reserve or protected forest. Dhanora, Etapalli, Aheri and Sironcha talukas in the eastern part of the district are covered by forest. Remaining 1.55% land of the total area is wasteland. The area receives an annual rainfall of nearly 1510 mm (http://nagpur.nic.in/ Introduction In recent years, comprehensive floristic accounts have been published for various states, districts and regions of India (Kumar et al. 2007). However, for Gadchiroli district, no taxonomical study of the available plants has been carried so far, although few ethnobotanical studies are previously reported. Major portion of the study area is covered with forest and the chief vegetation type is dry-deciduous (Tewari 1994; Tiwari and Padhye 1993) where teak and bamboo were found to be dominant elements. Many of the plants listed in this paper are utilized for medicinal purposes by the local tribal people, for example tree like Butea monosperma, Lannea coramandelica, Holarrhena pubescens, Pterocarpus marsupium, Soymida febrifuga, shrubs like Ceriscoides turgida, Gardenia resinifera, and herbs like Andrographis paniculata, Cullen corylifolia, Curculigo orchioides and Orthosiphon rubicundus. Summarily, the study aims to provide a list of plants occurring in Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra state of India.


Introduction
In recent years, comprehensive floristic accounts have been published for various states, districts and regions of India (Kumar et al. 2007).However, for Gadchiroli district, no taxonomical study of the available plants has been carried so far, although few ethnobotanical studies are previously reported.
Major portion of the study area is covered with forest and the chief vegetation type is dry-deciduous (Tewari 1994;Tiwari and Padhye 1993) where teak and bamboo were found to be dominant elements.Many of the plants listed in this paper are utilized for medicinal purposes by the local tribal people, for example tree like Butea monosperma, Lannea coramandelica, Holarrhena pubescens, Pterocarpus marsupium, Soymida febrifuga, shrubs like Ceriscoides turgida, Gardenia resinifera, and herbs like Andrographis paniculata, Cullen corylifolia, Curculigo orchioides and Orthosiphon rubicundus.Summarily, the study aims to provide a list of plants occurring in Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra state of India.

Materials and Methods
Present work is the outcome of 11 several seasonal field tours conducted during 2005-2010.In every tour, attempts were made to collect speciments from all the areas of the district.Plants specimens were collected, dried, pressed and were identified with the help of published local flora, books (Cooke 1903;1908;Sharma et al. 1996;Singh et al. 2001;Singh and Karthikeyan 2001) (Nagpur, Chandrapur) and by consulting the BSI western circle herbarium specimens .Plant specimens are deposited in the herbarium of Medicinal Plant Conservation Center, Pune (MPCC), Maharashtra under the first author's name.
Gadchiroli District, is situated in the South-eastern corner of Maharashtra, and is bounded by Chandrapur district in the west, Gondia District in the north, Chhatisgarh state in the east, and Andhra Pradesh state in Abstract: A qualitative survey was carried out during 2005-2010 of all indigenous and naturalized plants of Gadchiroli district, Maharashtra, India.There are 237 species belonging to 184 genera and 73 families which are listed in this paper.Out of 73 families listed, 63 belong to dicotyledonae and 10 belong to monocotyledonae.Dominant families were Fabaceae (21 genera), Acanthaceae (12 genera) followed by Asteracece (9 genera).The nomenclature system followed in this paper is up to date.Three plants (1.63%) listed in this paper come under Vulnerable (VU) and two (1.09%) comes under Lower Risk (LR) categories.Eleven genera (5.98%) are reported to be endemic to Maharashtra state of India.Only one plant species (Agave americana var.americana) was not native of the area and is cultivated.Voucher specimens of the representative plants are submitted at Medicinal Plants Conservation Center (MPCC), Pune, Maharashtra, and the voucher number is provided along with names of plants.
Bharati Vidyapeeth University, Interactive Research School for Health Affairs, Herbal Biotechnology Department, Katraj, Pune-Satara Road, Pune, Pin-411 043, Maharashtra, India * Corresponding author.Email: jagtapsd@gmail.comSuresh Jagtap * and Sourav Mukherjee Plant Diversity of Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra, India: A brief survey divisionalcommissioner/Dist_info/GAD.html).The main river basin of the district is the Godavari, which flows west to east and forms the southern boundary of the district.Gadchiroli district has prominent hills like Bhamragad, Tipagad, Palasgad and Surjagad area (Tiwari 1994) and is inhabited by tribes such as the Halbi, Gond, Pawra, Bhil (Tiwari and Padhye 1993).
Main text of the research paper is table number 1 which gives floristic components of Gadchiroli.The botanical names of plants are given under family names (arranged alphabetically) followed by distribution, local names and the voucher specimen number under which the specimens are deposited at the MPCC.

Species diversity
During the study, as many as 237 species of 184 genera belonging to 73 families (Table 1) were recorded.Out of these families, 10 belong to monocotyledonae (13.7 %) and 63 are from dicotyledonous plant families (86.3 % dicotyledones).The families with highest number of species were Fabaceae (21 genera; 11.41 %), Acanthaceae (12 genera; 6.52 %), Asteracece (9 genera; 4.89 %), Euphorbiaceae and Rubiaceae (8 genera; 4.35 %) followed by Convolvulaceae, Cucurbitaceae, Lamiaceae (6 genera each; 3.26 %), together represented 30.43% of all identified genera.Amongst monocotyledonous plants, Liliaceae represented maximum number of genera (4; 2.17 %) followed by Araceae, Poaceae and Zingiberaceae (3 each; 1.63 %).Thirty two (32; 43.8 %) families were represented by single genus and single species in the study area.In our sample most of the species (99.5 %) were native to the region and only one plant was cultivated (Agave americana var.americana).Tree species of the study area plays a vital role for day to day life of the tribal communities.Teak, bamboo being predominant components of the forest and are regularly used by the tribes for making home.Many plants listed here are used by local tribes for different purposes including medicinal aspect (Tewari 1994;Tiwari and Padhye 1993).Distribution of these listed plants were documented as abundant, common, cultivated, occasional based on the number of times they were encountered during exploration.

Status Determination of taxa
To assign status of distribution pattern of a taxa, the flora of Maharashtra by singh et.al (2001) (Singh et al. 2001;Singh and Karthikeyan 2001).
Thus this paper gives superficial idea about floristic composition of Gadchiroli district.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Map showing study area at Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra, India.

Table 1 .
List of plants their families, distribution, local name and herbarium number.