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Ecology

Document India's floral biodiversity

Nature volume 546, page 474 (2017)Cite this article

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This month's bicentenary of the birth of Joseph Dalton Hooker, one of the great botanical explorers of the nineteenth century, is a good time to highlight the urgent need to document India's remarkable biodiversity for conservation purposes (see also J. Endersby Nature 546, 472–473; 2017).

Hooker's compilation, The Flora of British India (1872–97), was the first, and is still the most authoritative, account of flowering plants in the country, which at that time included present-day Pakistan, Bangladesh and parts of Myanmar. Hooker corresponded with Charles Darwin on the 100 species of Himalayan Impatiens (balsams) he found (see go.nature.com/2sdxeby), new species of which are being discovered even now.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Massachusetts, Boston, USA

    Kamaljit S. Bawa

  2. Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment, Bangalore, India

    R. Ganesan

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  1. Kamaljit S. Bawa
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  2. R. Ganesan
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Correspondence to Kamaljit S. Bawa.

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Bawa, K., Ganesan, R. Document India's floral biodiversity. Nature 546, 474 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/546474d

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