An updated conspectus of grasses of Punjab (India) Print

Poaceae is the fourth largest family of the flowering plants. It includes about 700-800 genera and 11000-13000 species distributed worldwide. The family has unmatched ecological and economic importance. With its origin in the early cretaceous and major diversification in the mid Cenozoic، the family at present covers nearly a fifth of land surface and occurs in nearly all the habitats of the world. With a sub tropical ecology and an agrarian economy of Punjab، grasses comprise the most significant group in the region. Despite an overwhelming significance، taxonomic studies in grasses have not received sufficient attention in the region. It is only in the work of Sharma and Khosla (1989) that grass species have been classified into subfamilies and tribes. However، after the establishment of the Grass Phylogeny Working Group (GPWG) the world has witnessed a renaissance in grass systematics. But، India remains an ‘undercollected’ country as far as grass diversity is concerned. Our work on the exploration and systematics of the grass flora of the region is an effort to consolidate and update the information on the diversity of grasses of the studied area. The present studies have brought the cumulative species number to 192 including seven new reports. The species representation of subfamilies is: Aristidoideae (5) Arundinoideae (5) Bambusoideae (4)، Centothecoideae (1)، Chloridoideae (55) Erhartoideae (3)، Panicoideae (98) and Pooideae (21).