Checklist of angiosperms of Bhor Taluka , Pune District , northern Western Ghats of Maharashtra , India , based on herbarium records

Bhor is an important and floristically rich Taluka of Pune district, Maharashtra state, located on the Western Ghats of India. We provide here a comprehensive checklist of angiosperms occurring in this region based on records of the Agharkar Research Institute Herbarium (AHMA). A total number of 663 species of Angiosperms belonging to 420 genera under 99 families are documented in this paper.


Introduction
India is a country of rich biological diversity having world's biodiversity hotspots like Western Ghats (Myers et al. 2005).Western Ghats is a chain of mountains running parallel to the West Coast of India, from South of the Tapti river to Kanyakumari, with a single gap (Palghat gap) in between.Western Ghats can be further divided into Northern, Central, and Southern regions.Northern Western Ghats comprises the region from Gujarat running through Maharashtra, Goa, and parts of Karnataka up to Kali River.Pune is an important district of the Maharashtra state whose western part is located on the Northern Western Ghats.The Pune region is highly urbanized with rapid conversion of agricultural lands into non-agricultural uses, deforestation, pollution, and damming.However, 3,648 km 2 of the total area of the district is protected as forest, including 69 sacred groves (Gadgil & Vartak 1980), reserve forests, two wildlife sanctuaries (Bhimashankar and Mayureshwar) and a recently proposed Tamhini Wildlife Sanctuary.The hilly portion of the Western side of the district is covered by forestlands and includes Talukas like Junnar, Ambegaon, Khed, Maval, Mulshi, Velhe and Bhor, while other talukas of the district have negligible forest.Despite of having such large area under forest, there have been no efforts to document the flora of the Pune district as whole.There are sporadic reports and checklists and floras from small regions of the district such as Khandala (Santapau 1953) and Maval-Ambavane (Venkatareddy 1969).Bhor is in the extreme southern region of the district (Figure 1) with remarkable diversity of flowering plants.Plants of the Bhor Taluka have never been studied and documented except for some sporadic records, such as Vartak (1959aVartak ( , 1959bVartak ( , 1959c) but a comprehensive checklist of the taluka is not available.This paper is the first attempt to fulfill this gap.In this report, we present a checklist of wild angiosperm of the Taluka Bhor from the Pune District.
Abstract: Bhor is an important and floristically rich Taluka of Pune district, Maharashtra state, located on the Western Ghats of India.We provide here a comprehensive checklist of angiosperms occurring in this region based on records of the Agharkar Research Institute Herbarium (AHMA).A total number of 663 species of Angiosperms belonging to 420 genera under 99 families are documented in this paper.Western Maharashtra.For compilation of checklist of Bhor Taluka literature studies on earlier works of Bhor Taluka were done (Vartak 1959a(Vartak , 1959b(Vartak , 1959c)).All the specimens were carefully scrutinized for their identity and for the data recorded on the sheets.Species name, family, status of endemism, and accession number in AHMA are provided (Table 1).Botanical nomenclature follows the plant list (2013).Status of endemism follows the Flora of Maharashtra (Sharma et al. 1996;Singh and Karthikeyan 2000;Singh et al. 2001).

Results and Discussion
We found a total of 663 species of Angiosperms, from 420 genera and 99 families (Table 1).In addition to these, the Taluka has also many cultivated species.
Amongst the dominant genera, Cyperus (18 species) is at the top of the list, followed by Crotalaria with 14 species and Fimbristylis (13 species).Out of 420 genera recorded, 1.65 % are represented by more than 5 species, whereas 45 % are represented by only a single species.Out of 663 species recorded, 418 are herbs, 66 shrubs, and 82 are tree.In addition, 35 are climbers, 34 undershrubs, 20 climbing shrubs, 1 Straggling Shrub, and 7 scandent shrubs (Figure 2).Leguminosae is the dominant family, with 87 species, followed by Poaceae with 62 species, and Cyperaceae and Compositae having 57 and 49 species, respectively.Out of 99 families, 10 are represented by more than 10 genera, whereas 44 are represented by single genus.Out of 100 families, 11 are represented by more than 10 species, whereas 36 families are represented by a single species.
Out of 663 species, 108 belonging to 35 families are endemic.These species are broadly endemic to the Western Ghats or Peninsular India and/or national endemics.Most endemics species ( 14) are Poaceae and Leguminosae, followed by Orchidaceae with 12 species.Out of the 108 endemic species recorded, about 50% (55 species) occur in deciduous habitat, followed by 18 species from semi-evergreen habitat.Thirteen species share semievergreen and deciduous habitat, while rock outcrops and grasslands have 12 and 10 endemic species, respectively (Figure 3).Another interesting record is of Crotalaria clavata, which is Critically Endangered due to habitat loss (Ansari, 2008) and occurs in Bhor.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Location of the Bhor Taluka in the Pune District of Maharashtra, India.

Figure 2 .
Figure 2. Classification of species according to their growth habit.

Figure 3 .
Figure 3. Distribution of endemics across different habitats.

Table 1 .
List of species.