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accepted  system  of  subgeneric  classification,  to  check  whether  the  leaf  morphological

               clustering is similar to the subgeneric classification or not.
               RESULT

                       The 12 species of Ficus studied showed morphological variations in leaf characters.
               They showed variations in the size, shape and indumentum pattern of the leaf. The phenetic

               analysis separated the 12 species of Ficus with considerable level of dissimilarity based on
               the leaf morphology (Fig 2).











































               Fig 2. Dendrogram generated using PAST Ver 2 software showing leaf morphology-based

               clustering.
                       The  maximum  similarity  was  observed  for  F.  talbotii  &  F.  binnendijkii,  with  a

               similarity value of 80 %. On comparison with the current classification of Ficus (Berg, 2003),
               the leaf morphology-based clustering was entirely different.  Most of the subgenera was not

               clustered together.  The much similar clustering was observed for the subg. Urostigma with

               all the three species clustered together along with a subg. Sycomorus member. Thus, it was
               observed that the leaf morphology-based clustering is  different  with  the current  system  of

               classification.






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