Check List 8(3): 321-348, doi: 10.15560/8.3.321
Vascular plants, Kinnaur, Himachal Pradesh, India
Amit Chawla‡,
Om Parkash‡,
Varun Sharma§,
S. Rajkumar|,
Brij Lal‡,
. Gopichand‡,
R. D. Singh¶,
A. K. Thukral# ‡ Institute of Himalayan Bioresource Technology (Council of Scientific and Industrial Research), India§ Nature India Eco Solutions, India| NRC in DNA Fingerprinting, India¶ stitute of Himalayan Bioresource Technology (Council of Scientific and Industrial Research),# Guru Nanak Dev University, India
Corresponding author:
Amit Chawla
(
amitchawla21@gmail.com
)
© 2017 Amit Chawla, Om Parkash, Varun Sharma, S. Rajkumar, Brij Lal, . Gopichand, R. Singh, A. Thukral. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Citation:
Chawla A, Lal B, Singh R, Parkash O, Sharma V, Gopichand ., Rajkumar S, Thukral A (2012) Vascular plants, Kinnaur, Himachal Pradesh, India. Check List 8(3): 321-348. https://doi.org/10.15560/8.3.321 | |
Abstract
In the present study, we provide a checklist of the vascular plants of Kinnaur district situated in the Himachal Pradesh state of India in the western Himalaya. This checklist includes 893 taxa (viz., species, subspecies and varieties) belonging to 881 species of angiosperms and gymnosperms distributed among 102 families and 433 genera, and 30 species of pteridophytes. Information about the growth habit, threat and endemicity status is also provided. Our results show that family Compositae is by far the most species rich family with 122 species, followed by Poaceae (69), Rosaceae (58), Leguminosae (49) and Lamiaceae (38). Among the genera, Artemisia is the most diverse genus with 19 species, followed by Potentilla (14), Saussurea (13), Polygonum (11), Astragalus (10), Lonicera (10) and Nepeta (10). Similar to other regions in the western Himalayan range, family-to-genera ratio was 1:4.25 and the genera-to-species ratio was 1:2.04. Out of 893 taxa, our checklist includes 606 herb species, 63 trees, 108 shrubs, 28 climbers, 67 graminoids and 21 sedges and rushes. Of all the species recorded, 108 (12.2%) are endemic to western Himalaya and 27 (3%) are placed under IUCN threatened categories. The present checklist on the flora of Kinnaur provides an important baseline data for further quantitative studies on the characteristics of plant communities in this region and will help in the identification of priority conservation areas.
Keywords
flora; India; Himachal Pradesh; check list