How to Use

"A picture is worth a thousand words" is a popular English saying.  A human being remains surrounded by countless objects in his life and the images of these objects are deeply engraved in his mind which helps him to remember the names of so many objects. We used to remember a large number of individuals by their faces, so why can't plants?

How to Use This Site

    One may see the majority of seed plant (Angiosperms and Gymnosperms) species present in the Pantnagar area by selecting the Angiosperm or Gymnosperm column in the top horizontal menu and then selecting the name of the family in the drop-down menu. For a particular species write the scientific name of a species in the search box and browse the results. For just seeing all included species browse family pages, one by one, from the drop-down menu at the top or through family names listed in Angiosperm families (A-Z) and in Gymnosperm families. To see a larger image of a species click on the name of the species given below the image on family pages.

Information Displayed and Resources Cited

To the students of Botany additional information is available on family pages: 

• Author citation and original publication detail of family name are based on the information available in the International Plant Name Index (IPNI 2021), the most trusted resource for land plants.

• Characteristic features of the family, mainly morphological features, are also provided. More information on the morphological features of families can be accessed on the websites of Watson & Dallwitz (1992 onwards), Stevens (2001 onwards), POWO (2019) and Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org).

• The Family pages in eflorapantnagar provide diversity of the family (number of genera and species) in the world based on The Plant List (2013), Christenhusz & Byng (2016), Mabberley (2017) and CoL (2021); in India mainly based on Karthikeyan (2000), Karthikeyan et al. (2009) and contemporary literature; in Indian Himalayan Region based on Singh et al. (2019);  in Uttarakhand based on Uniyal et al. (2007) and Pusalkar & Srivastava (2018). Botanical Survey of India have recently published (BSI 2021) the 'Checklist of Plants of India' (Angiosperms, Gymnosperms, Pteridophytes, Bryophytes, Lichen, Fungi and Algae). The number of genera and species in India on family pages is also based on this resource. The Plant List (2013) is not being updated after publication in 2013 and has been replaced by World Flora Online (WFO 2021; www.worldfloraonline.org). 

• Systematic position of the family in nine important systems of classifications- Bentham and Hooker (1862-83), Engler and Prantl (1887-1915), Hutchinson (1973), Cronquist (1988), Thorne & Reveal (2007), Takhtajan (2009), Reveal (2012), APG IV (2016), Shipunov (2021) is provided based on the perusal of the original documents.

• The systematic position of the family in the 2-superkingdom 7-kingdom classification of Ruggiero et al. (2015) is also provided. This classification of life on Earth is now widely used in standard scientific literature. 

• The images of genera and species of wild plants known and photographed in Pantnagar are provided as smaller images arranged according to scientific names in alphabetical order. These images are equally useful to students and people interested in plants. The larger image of each plant displayed is linked with the scientific name given below each image and can be seen by clicking on the scientific name. The circumscriptions of the families are according to APG-IV (2016), Mabberley (2017) and POWO (2019) for angiosperm families while for gymnosperm it follows Christenhusz et al. (2011), Mabberley (2017) and POWO (2019). However, the circumscription of families in the sources used for mentioning several genera and species in India and Uttarakhand may not necessarily be according to APG-IV (2016) or POWO (2019), thus indicating the approximate number of genera and species. Wherever circumscriptions of the families are very different, it is mentioned.

• The cultivated flora in eflorapantnagar is also displayed, though, not completely. Images of cultivated species are displayed under 'Cultivated Flora' after wild flora on each family page. Here, in addition to the scientific name of species, a little additional information like vernacular names, nativity, common characteristics, flowering periods etc are also added. The nativity of species is mainly based on POWO (2019) and Graff (1992) while common characteristics and flowering periods are based on the observations in Pantnagar.