Welcome to the eFlora of Jagraon (Punjab)

eflorajagraon.org

JAGRAON is a city, municipal council, a rural police district and subdivision in Ludhiana district of Punjab state of India. City is about 16 km away from Satluj river and is almost the geographical centre of Punjab. Jagraon is a small city spread over an area of about 10.5 km2 with a human population of about 85,000. It is located at 30.78° N and 75.48° E and has an average elevation of 234 m. Over the course of the year the temperature varies from 5° to 45° C, with summers very hot from Mid-May to Mid-July (40-45° C) and winters also quite harsh from Mid-December to Mid-February (temperature dipping to 5° C). Geographically, the city is a part of Malwa region and is dry for most of the year with an average annual rainfall of 10-50 cm, that too, mostly during the monsoon period. The water table is quite low and every year going down and down alarmingly because of excess consumption of water due to increasing human population, urbanization and rice cultivation.

Jagraon is the home of Lala Lajpat Rai, a well-known figure in Indian Independence Movement. His house is now the municipal library of the city. The city is also known for “Roshni Mela“ (Festival of Lights). This fair is held in the month of February at mazaar of Peer Baba Mohkumdeen which lasts for 3 days. Thousands of people of Punjab and neighbouring states throng this area, light an earthen lamp and pray.

• Major part of land is under cultivation and natural forest cover is very low which includes principally the trees planted along and around the rivers, canals, roads, residential areas etc. The total forest cover is with moderate biodiversity consisting of dense bushes, scattered thorny trees, coarse grasses, herbs and climbers.


• Topography of Jagraon has changed dramatically in the last four decades as observed by the authors. There used to be a large number of water reservoirs in the form of ponds with lot of aquatic flora and fauna including many birds feeding upon these plants. The hammer of urbanization slowly and slowly took toll of these ponds which were manually filled by sand, thus got perished completely and subsequently buildings were erected in these areas.


• The agricultural fields in the outer skirts of the city are replaced by the residential and commercial buildings. The National Highway and other roads were widened. All this led to the disappearance of many species from this area. The well-known species which is at the verge of complete disappearance is Capparis decidua.


• S. Govt. College of Science Education and Research, Jagraon is an institute spread over an area of 42 acres of land. It has a Botanical Garden, a Nanak Bagichi of medicinal plants, a Microforest and a large arboretum. The college has very rich biodiversity consisting of many wild and cultivated plant species of herbs, shrubs, climbers, bamboos, palms, and gymnosperms. This plant diversity becomes habitat for many species of birds, butterflies and reptiles. In real sense this college is the “Hot Spot” of Jagraon city.

The population of India is increasing substantially and has led to the shrinkage and loss of forest cover due to unslakeable demand for agriculture land. Further developmental activities associated with modern life style of society has led to converting agricultural land into more and more colonies to meet the increasing demand for spacious houses, commercial organizations and wide roads.

India has rich biodiversity but a worrisome and serious problem is our ignorance about the magnitude of this biodiversity and its fast depletion and the still more serious problem is the ignorance about the biodiversity of local areas. For the proper utilization of plant resources, there is a great need of exhaustive field study followed by up-to-date compilation of local floras of the country. It is one of the proposals of Botanical Survey of India to publish “District or small regional floras” and the data thus provided by these studies would act as source material for writing floras of higher magnitudes like “State Floras” and “Indian Flora”. This would give us the total data of biodiversity which would help us for judicious utilization of the resources and their conservation.

With the above facts in mind and judging from our own experience it was felt that there is an urgent need of a floristic account of local flora to know the plants around us. After our retirement an earnest effort was made to undertake the present work and it took about a decade for its completion.

Our endeavour to produce this eflora would help the students and teachers of biology and plant-loving public in general in identifying the plants in their surroundings, gardens, kitchen gardens, agricultural fields, fallow land, unirrigated areas and along the roads and canals.

The plants were collected personally from Jagraon within a radius of 5-8 km from the centre of Jagraon i.e. Rani Jhansi Chowk, identified them with the help of floras manually and online and then described these with our own observations. Biodiversity is found to be moderate with 610 flowering plant species. Circumscription of the families (107) and their arrangement in the flora is largely according to Bentham & Hooker’s system of classification, though some families are treated as per POWO (Plants of the world online). The generic and specific names are as per the names followed in POWO (Plants of the world online). The botanical description is supported by the photographs taken in field and laboratory by the senior author using Sony DSC H10 and Sony DSC HX200V. All the photographs are original.

Although the present flora represents Punjab, but up to a very small extent. Much more floristic data is to be added. Thus taxonomists or even simply the botanists of different areas of Punjab can add more such information from their respective areas to give a new impetus to our present work and help to prepare a bigger volume of information of biodiversity of Punjab and make it available online.

In a work of this nature which is being subjected to modern researches from different disciplines, there is always scope of improvement. In spite of all our efforts, some inadvertent errors and omissions might have crept in the present work. We would gratefully appreciate the constructive criticism and candid suggestions from the readers for the improvement of the present work.

In the end we would like to thank all our students and colleagues who at times have expressed the need of the local flora so as to help the people to identify and know the plants around them. This inspired us to undertake this project.