The book- Plants of Kedarnath Wildlife Sanctuary, Western Himalaya: A Field Guide
D.S Rawat
Yesterday (27th Sept. 2017) I received my copy of ‘Plants of Kedarnath Wildlife Sanctuary, Western Himalaya: A Field Guide”.
As claimed it is a good field guide for the person interested in flowering plants of West Himalayan hills. The authors of this document are well known workers of angiosperm taxonomy who have done extensive explorations in this part of the Himalaya. Expertise of the authors is visible in this document where they have described and illustrated about 575 species of montane, sub-alpine and alpine habitats. The alpine flora of the Himalaya, particularly of the Uttarakhand is difficult as these plants are less accessible and thus not well studied, collected or photographed. Even in the Oleg Polunin and Adam Stainton’s “Flowers of the Himalaya”, one of the most important pictorial document for high elevation flora, Uttarakhand was not well represented which becomes apparent by their remark- “It must be confessed that both authors have traveled much less in the hills of Uttar Pradesh than elsewhere in the Himalaya.” and “However, it remains true that if one wishes to see either the East or West Himalayan flora at its best one should not choose to visit this central portion”. I wonder, the authors of this field guide either took it as a challenge or were inspired by the ‘Flowers of the Himalaya’. The fact considered as weakness by Polunin and Stainton can be taken as strength of the flora of Uttarakhand where both eastern Himalayan and western Himalayan elements intermingle and represented making it rich, though with less endemism.
What attracts me more is the price of this document which is very affordable to even a research student (it costs 695 India Rupees including postage) and I hope it will soon become popular for this reason alone.
Printing quality has
improved in India significantly and this document with this much low price is
one example. However, one must not forget that conditions in high hills are not
always very friendly for photographing the plants, particularly in rainy
season, the main flowering season. It must have taken years of repeated efforts
to develop this remarkable collection of large number of species. Since it is a
field guide (and not a traditional flora) it lacks keys but the authors have an
alternative to it in the form of a short cut to reach to a species by
classifying plants based on flower colours and providing thumbnail and page
number of each species in this classification.
The nomenclatural part and identifications are appropriate though I disagree/ sceptical (I wish I prove wrong!) with (very) few identities. Though, these do not undermine the quality and usefulness of this document.
In my opinion this book deserves place in institutional libraries, and more so in the personal libraries of the naturalists interested in the floral wealth of the Himalaya. It makes the difficult job of identification easier with images and description, after all “a picture is worth a thousand words”.
DSRawat Pantnagar
Dr D.S. Rawat
J.M. Garg
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Pankaj Kumar
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Pankaj Kumar, Ph.D.
IUCN-SSC Orchid Specialist Group Asia
Office:
Conservation Officer
Orchid Conservation Section
Flora Conservation Department
Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden (KFBG) Corporation
Lam Kam Road, Tai Po, New Territories, Hong Kong.Residence:
House no. 39, 2nd Floor, Shui Wo Tsuen
email: pku...@kfbg.org; sahani...@gmail.com
Phone: +852 2483 7128 (office - 8:30am to 5:00pm); +852 9436 6251 (mobile); Fax: +852 2483 7194
Ashwini Bhatia
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Dr. Ishwari Rai
Regards
Ishwari
Samir Mehta
Some random thoughts:
We need more quality publications by Indian authors.
Pictorial guides are the need of the hour for broadening the serious (non-professional) flower-watcher base in the country.
I see no reason why even such guides cannot incorporate keys for identification in a separate section.
As I have not yet seen the book specific comments on this publication are reserved.
Best Wishes,
Samir Mehta
J.M. Garg
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J.M.Garg
'Creating awareness of Indian Flora & Fauna'
Winner of Wipro-NFS Sparrow Awards 2014 for efloraofindia.
For identification, learning, discussion & documentation of Indian Flora, please visit/ join our Efloraofindia Google e-group (largest in the world- around 2800 members & 2,65,000 messages on 31.3.17) or Efloraofindia website (with a species database of more than 12,000 species & 2,50,000 images).
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