Endangered Medicinal Plants

This is an endeavour of the author to present a vast quantity of fact-based reliable analytical data on the status (density and frequency etc.) of medicinal plants of India in his book. His inferences have the basis of field-based study on Status of Plants the findings of which nullifies much bloated assertions of the experts on pharmacopoeia and of the pharmacologists that India was still a rich store house of medicinal plant resources; Their findings were never based on analytical (quantitative) data, besides that the systematic botanists have only prepared check lists of plants with morphological descriptions but never mentioned about regeneration and on the their status (density, frequency, abundance etc.) So the floras do not speak of status –abundance or decay of various species. The exception was with the foresters who prepared status lists commercial tree species; with the formation of Forest Survey of India the country had adequate status data on commercial tree species of the entire country. There has been a big lacunae on the status assessment of herbs, shrubs and climbers which form substantial number of medicinal plants. While making his assessment the author has applied his long years of field inventory experience and findings to arrive at a dependable figures. He has stressed that there has been continuous depletion of vegetation brought by various biotic and abiotic factors well displayed in a number of charts and maps. The author has marked the status of species of plants prepared by Chopra, Kirtikar and Bose, S. Bhattacharya. He has also given an outline information of drug plants, export, import, threats and cultivation. The author desires that it was time to enforce strict conservation measure of flora besides inventory made on herbs, shrubs, climbers on medicinal plants. On the whole the book gives a broad outline of the present status of medicinal plants and some information associated with it.