Information on nearly 16,000 species of plants, ferns, creepers, and trees from across peninsular India can now be accessed online.
The Flora of Peninsular India , which has data on over 10,233 species, and Flora of Eastern Ghats , which enumerates in impressive detail over 4,097 species, are a testament to nearly 12 years of work by the Indian Institute of Science researchers to make information on plants in the country more accessible to even a casual nature enthusiast.
The websites took root in the stacks of specimens kept neatly at the nearly six-decade-old Herbarium JCB at the Centre for Ecological Science (CES) at IISc. K. Sankara Rao, 80, former professor at the CES, and one of the founders of the herbarium, is the brains behind the digital repository.
“People think a herbarium is a place for dead specimens and there is no value to it. Many institutions have even done away with it. (But) there is vast amounts of information in the herbarium, and we wanted to disseminate this information to anyone who is interested,” he said after the launch of the websites on Saturday.
Around 12 years ago, Prof. Rao hit upon the idea to create a digital repository based on the herbarium. “We enquired then whether there was a database of plants in India. There was no database, and even now, there is no digital database apart from what we have created,” he said.
His team digitised the collection, while enhancing information present through their field visits, photographing individual plants, and recording even their GPS locations.
Five years ago, their intensive legwork resulted in a digital library of flora in Karnataka. Bolstered by the feedback, they extended their work to the Eastern Ghats and central India. Now, information on plants from more than 14 States is available in the two newly launched websites.
“In spite of being a global biodiversity hotspot, India lags behind many other countries. We do not currently have a targeted national effort in a single scientifically validated, curated digital platform for our flora,” said Rudra Pratap, Deputy Director of IISc.
Easy accessibility
Apart from species names and other botanical details, the websites provide details about the distribution of plants, their conservation status (including 528 endangered species), and even local names in languages such as Kannada, Malayalam, Telugu, Tamil, Odiya and Hindi.
“We are losing our natural landscape and species associated with it to economy and development ... This database is for the younger generation,” said Prof. Rao.
