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for food, shelter, medicine and other needs. Plants have played a critical role in maintaining

human health.
There are an estimated that between 300,000 and 500,000 species of land plants

(Angiosperms, Gymnosperms, Pteridophytes, and Bryophytes), with diversity strongly
concentrated in the humid tropics. Many species are still unknown to science. Perhaps a third

of all land plants are at risk of extinction, including many that are un described, or are
described but otherwise data deficient (Corlett 2016).

India is one of the mega biodiversity centers in the world and has two of the world’s

18 ‘biodiversity hotspots’ located in the Western Ghats and in the Eastern Himalayas. The
country supports a diverse array of habitat or ecosystems such as forests, grasslands,

wetlands, coastal, marine and desert and each with rich and unique floristic diversity. There

are about 17,527 species, 296 sub-species, 2215 varieties, 33 sub-varieties and 70 forma,
altogether 20,141 taxa of angiosperms under 2991 genera and 251 families in India,

representing approximately 7% of the described species in the world (Karthikeyan 2009).
Family Poaceae is the largest in India being represented by 263 genera and 1291 species

(Arisdason and Lakshminarasimhan 2014).
Kerala is the southernmost state along the western coast of peninsular India.

Flowering plants of Kerala exhibit all known life forms such as, herbs, shrubs, tree, herbs or

shrubs, shrubs or trees, climbing or twining herb and climbing or twining shrubs. The studies
related to the flowering plants of Kerala shows that about 4681 species, 57 sub-species and

287 varieties are occurring in this state (Nayar et al 2006).The predominant forest types of
Kerala are: Wet evergreen, Moist deciduous, Semi evergreen, Moist deciduous, Dry

deciduous and Shola-grassland complex (Champion & Seth, 1968). Kerala has a warm-humid
climate with perennial water resource and nutrient rich soil has attributed to diverse

vegetation with enormous species diversity in the state.

The present study area of Pappanamcode is located in Thiruvananthapuram district,
the capital of Kerala. It is one of the major industrial centers in Thiruvananthapuram. But it is

a highly diversified area, and it shows rich vegetation of plants. The area consists of a number

of medicinal herbs, ornamental garden plants, edible fruit plants, economically valuable
plants etc.

Nowadays, due to population growth and anthropogenic activities, such as
urbanization, encroachment of water bodies, forest & agricultural fields and transportation

pose considerable degree of threat to the biodiversity. These activities disturb the ecological
balance and ultimately resulting in massive destruction of flora and fauna.

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