Lahore District Flora

LAHORE DISTRICT FLORA By the late SHIV RAM KASHYAP. DJSc., F. A. S. B., R. B., I. E. S., Professor of Botany, Panjab University Revised and completed by Amar Chand Joshi, M. Sc., Assistant Professor of Botany, Benares Hindu University With a Foreword by Haraprasad Chaudhuri, Head of the Department of University Teaching in Botany and Director, Kashyap Research Laboratory, Panjab University PUBLISHED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF THE PANJAB, LAHORE PRINTED BY P. KNIGHT, BAPTIST MISSION PRESS. 41 A. LOWER CIRCULAR ROAD, CALCUTTA. PUBLISHED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF THE PANJAB. LAHORE FOREWORD Professor Shiv Ram Kashyap died on the 26th November, 1934 For the last several years before his death, he was working on this Flora, for in India there are very few small local floras, specially in those districts which are seats of University instruction. Tt is not possible for all students of the B. Sc. Pass or even for B. Sc. Honours School classes to consult a work like Flora of British India . They need a smaller volume which could be used both in the classroom and in the field. It was to meet this difficulty that the late Professor took up the writing of the Lahore District Flora. Prof. Kashyap made tho collection of plants on which this book is based and also made all the sketches illustrating this volume but before he could complete the book his life was suddenly and prematurely cut short by the cruel hand of death. He had written out the descriptions of plants from the Itananculacece to Leguminosece . Mr. Amar Chand Joshi, an old student of ours now Assistant Professor of Botany, Benares Hindu University, who had been helping the late Professor during his holidays in the preparation of the manuscript, readily agreed at my request to check rewse and complete the manuscript of the Flora. Mr. Joshi checked by comparing with the specimens nu only in the Panjab University Herbarium but also in the Herbarium of the Royal Botanical Gardens, Sibpur, Calcutta. Mr. Joshi followed the plan adopted by Professor Kashyap in describing the plants. The book deals with all the flowering plants found wild in the Lahore District except the grasses and the sedges. Tho more important cultivated plants are also mentioned at the end of the families to which they belong. Sometimes a brief description of these is given in smaller types, but no attempt has been made to describe them fully. Vernacular names of the plants are given when these are more or less definite and are in common use. Though the authors have consulted all the important Indian floras published so far, special mention should be made of Hookers Flora of British India, Duthies Flora of the Upper Gangetic Plain and Parkers Forest Flora of the Punjab with Delhi and Hazara. The descriptions of the genera are largely based on the first work. In conclusion, I have to thank Mr. Joshi for completing the volume Mr. K. P. Biswas, Curator of the Herbarium, Royal Botanical Gardens, IV FOREWORD Sibpur, Calcutta, for the facility given to Mr. Joshi for work in the Herbarium and the Syndicate of the Panjab University for the special grant to meet the cost of the publication of the volume. Kashyap Research Laboratory, Panjab University Botany Department, H. CHAUDHURI Lahore, November 26, 1936. SYNOPSIS OF THE FAMILIES. The families of flowering plants in the present account are mostly arranged according to Bentham and Hookers Genera Plantarum thearrangement which has been followed by the writers of most of the other Indian Floras. According to this system of classification, the various families are divided into the following main groups I. Angiosperms. Ovules present inside a closed ovary. Pollination takes place through the stigma and the stylo. A. Dicotyledons. Vascular bundles in the transverse section of a young stem arranged in a circle. Stem, when perennial, with concentric layers of wood and a separable bark, growing in thickness by means of a cambium. Leaves net-veined. Perianth mostly 4-or 5-merous...