Page 679 - e-Book

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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