TITLE:
Campus-Wide Floristic Diversity of Medicinal Plants in Indian Institute of Technology-Madras (IIT-M), Chennai
AUTHORS:
Arumugam Nagarajan, Saravanan Soorangkattan, Kavitha Thangavel, Boobalan Thulasinathan, Jothi Basu Muthuramalingam, Arun Alagarsamy
KEYWORDS:
Medicinal Plants, Medicinal Tree, Plant Diversity, Ethano Botany
JOURNAL NAME:
American Journal of Plant Sciences,
Vol.8 No.12,
November
13,
2017
ABSTRACT: The floristic diversity of plants and their
abundance were analyzed in 2.5 km campus to explore their medical importance by
random sampling. The results for plant diversity in IIT-M campus showed nearly
100 species of flowering plants, with genera belonging to nearly 40 families.
The most dominant family in the present study is Fabaceae with 15 species (25%)
of the medicinal trees. In addition, the dominant medicinal herbs belong to the
families of Acanthaceae, Apocynaceae, Fabaceae and Rubiaceae containing 4
species (12%) each. The identified medicinal tree and herb are verified with
Red data book to explore their conservation status of every identified
medicinal trees and herbs. On comparison with the existing IUCN red data list,
the conservation status of 73% of trees and herbs identified in the present
study were not assessed. Also, the biodiversity of plants focused on
ethano-botanical aspects to reveal their medicinal uses.