Chapter I

INTRODUCTION I : INTRODUCTION

1.1 General Note : district is one of the important districts in State having good vegetation. It has 13 talukas.Out of these Bhor, Velhe, Haveli, Purandhar , , Mulshi, Mawal, and Ambegaon are very rich in floristic composition. These all talukas form the part of . The Floristic study of some talukas in the district has been done. But Bhor taluka did not receive proper attention of botanists and remained unexplored botanically. Therefore it was decided to undertake floristic and -t ethnobotanical ^ d ies of Bhor taluka of this district. Bhor taluka has small area as compared to other talukas of . Bhor town is ^ headquarters of this tahsil. It is situated 54 km south of Pune city. The taluka is situated between 18*^ and IS*’ . 45’ ‘North latitude and 73°. 15’ East of longitude. It has an area of 892.0 sq. km. It is bordered by the taluka of Satara district on the east, Mahad of on the west, Wai of Satara district on the south and Velhe, Haveli and Purandhar talukas on the north. The on South-North forms boundary between Pune and Satara districts. Bhor taluka has 185 small villages. Bhor and Nasarapur are big towns in this taluka. The total population is 1,54,903. Bhor town is situated on an elevation of about 591.43 m. above the mean sea level. The forest cover of Bhor taluka is 60 % of the total area. It is divided into 5 major belts, such as Hirdoshi forest, Rayreshwar forest, Bhutonde forest, Nasarapur forest and Bhor forest. It includes both reserved and protected

forests. Complete Bhor taluka has hilly areas and comes under rural area of the Pune district. Agriculture is the main source of livelihood of people of this area. Majority of the people depend on their own farms.Forest labourers collect wood and other jungle products like edible fruits, gum, honey, medicinal plants etc. The soils of the area can be classified as red soil, brownish soil, sandy loam soil and black cotton soil. Bhatghar is the major and important dam in the Bhor taluka. The reservoir is named as “Yesaji Kank Jalashaya”. The consturction of another Nira-Deoghar dam is in progress. There is one sugar factory Anantrao Thopate Sahakari Sakhar Karkhana at Nigade. The four major rivers Nira, Yelwandi, Gunjawani and Shivganga flow through this taluka. These are tributaries of and flow from west to east. The chief roads passing through tahsil are Mahad-Pandharpur and National highway No.- 4 Bombay to Bangalore. There are many historical and places of tourists attraction in Bhor taluka. These are. 1. Historical places I) Bhor - known for historical places from Peshwa regime. II) Shind - The memorial monument of Bajiprabhu Deshpande. III) Rayari - Rohideshwar temple, where Chhatrapati Shivaji took the oath of swaraj. IV) Ambawade - The samadhi of Pant Sachiv Raghunathrao.

2) Historical Forts : I) Vichitragad II) Rayareshwar. 3) Tourist places ; I) Bhor - The Palace of Peshwa. II) Bhatgar - “ Y esaj i Kank J alashay a” III) Nasarapur - Baneshwar temple of Lord . IV) Ambawade - Ancient Nagnath temple V) Rayari - Rayreshwar fort and Rohideshwar temple.

1.2 Reasons for undertaking the present study and its importance: The present study was undertaken with the view to contribute for revi­ sion of the Flora of Maharashtra State. The area selected for the study was not well explored previously ; further it happens to be the area which is much favoured by Ayurvedic and Unani practitioners for medicinal plants. The Government of Maharashtra has decided to make Warandha Ghat as tourist place with the increasing tourists number, the vegetation and flora of this area is certainly going to be affected and rare plant species may become extinct. In view of this the present study will be helpful in recording the plant wealth of this area and after recording rare and endangered species, remedial mea­ sures for conservation of such species could be suggested. In the present study efforts have been made to give accurate information about the fodder resources, edible fruits, medicinal plants of this area. This flora will be help­ ful to the students of Botany at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Forest offficials. Pharmacologists, Agriculturists, Environmentalist etc. in their re­ search and management programmes. Detailed information is provided here in various chapters of this thesis. 1.3 Previous work : Bhor taluka and Warandha Ghat is the Western-southern part of Pune District. It is totally rural and hilly area. There is uptill now no detailed floristic study, on the Flora of Bhor taluka, but Kothari and Moorthy (1993) in their ‘Flora of Raigad district’, mentioned some plant species from Warandha Ghat and Shivther Ghal. Vartak V.D. (1959), in his paper mentioned some plants species. a) Important Floristic Works on Maharashtra state : Maharashtra state belongs to the sixth division of botanical provinces as recognised by Hooker and Thomson (1855). List of plants of Bombay was published by Woodrow and Gammie (1916). More comprehensive works on the region are ‘Bombay Flora’ by Dalzell and Gibson (1861) and the ‘Flowering plants of Western ’ by Nairne (1894). A consolidated account ‘Flora of the Presidency of Bombay’ covering Maharashtra, Sind, Gujrat and north Kanara district was pubished by Theodore Cooke (1901-1908). Later Talbot published, ‘Forest Flora of and Sind (1909-1911) based on collections of Lush, Ritchie, Stocks, Law, Nairne, Woodrow, Gammie^etc. During 2"'* and 3'^* decade Of 20'*’ century. Blatter and McCann published series of papers on the Flora of this area. During last 6 decades, number of workers in their individual capacity have contributed to the plant wealth of Maharashtra. Flora of Osmanabad was published by Naik (1969). Botanical Survey of India has recently publishec^;Floristic account for 6 districts of the state viz, Akola (Kamble and Pradhan, 1988), Sindhudurg (Kulkarni, 1988), Satara (Deshpande, Sharma and Nayar, 1990), Nashik district by Laxminarasimnan & Sharma, 1992 & Flora of Yawatmal district by Karthikeyan and Anand Kumar (1983). Flora of Sawantwadi taluka has been fairly well published by Almeida (1990). Flora of Maharashtra state ^nocotyledones by B.D. Sharma, S. Karthikeyan and N.P. Singh (1996), Botanical Survey of India have been published. The Floras of some more districts have been worked out, however, the account is yet to be published. Thus even after 100 years, Cooke’s “Flora of the Presidency of Bombay’ remains the only authoritative flora of this reeion. b) Floristic work in Pune district: Pune district is one of the important district having very good vegetation. A number of botanists have contributed to the floristic work on 7 Pune district such as the floristic account has been given 'following botanists. Toma hills(yartak, V. D, 1953), Purandhar (Santapau, H. 1953), Khandala on the Western Ghats (Santapau, H. 1953) ‘Bhimashankar and surrounded area of , (Janardhannan K.P., 1966)^Sakarpathar and regions of Pune District, (Venkata Reddy, 1970) 'I -50 ‘Bhimashankar’ (Jagdale; 1994)/^district Pune’ (Ganorkar, R. P. 1987)j Mawal taluka. Pune district (Godbole A. J., 1994). 1.4 Present work ; The present work is based on the result of about six years (1994- 2000) intensive explorations to the Floristic & edinohotanical studies of Warandha Ghat and adjacent areas of Bhor taluka of Pune district. During the exploration work, care has been taken to cover different vegetational zones and to visit all areas in almost all the seasons so as to collect plants in flowering and fruiting to give satisfactory coverage of the flora of the whole taluka. Observations were noted in the field book, specially prepared to complete information from which the specimens collected were serially numbered. Field data covered notes especially of those characters that cannot be studied from the pressed specimens such as habit, colour of a flower, odour if any, association, frequency^ etc. Specimens of the some species were collected from differeent localities in view of obtaining its distributional data. Apart from ^turally occurring wild plants the flora includes many cultivated as well as exotic plants. Some bulbous and other herbaceous plants were cultivated in the experimental gard^ of Dahiwadi college Dahiwadi, Satara district and Botanical survey of India Pune and studied. The present flora deals with 789 species belonging to 523 genera and 145 families. Further details are provied in floristic analysis. PLATE - 1

1. View of Warandha Ghat

2. Vegetation of Shivther Ghal

3. Deciduous forest at Hirdoshi