Floristic composition and practices on the selected sacred groves of Pallapatty village (reserved forest), Tamil Nadu.

Abstract

India is a land of rich biodiversity in which 2 out of the 25 biodiversity hot spots of the world exist. Biodiversity in India particularly is important for its religious, spiritual and other traditional uses. Many plants and animals have significance and are considered sacred on account of their association with different deities. In India, conservation of plants and animals by the indigenous people is very common. They believe trees are the place of Gods. Sacred groves are the example of this conservation. These are the locked information sites, about secret of herbs and their medicinal uses by their forefathers as traditional medicine and how the herbs used by sorcery for removing spirit as well as specter (ghost). It provides the information about the primitive life form and condition of religious taboo 1 . These are the repositories of rare and endemic species, and can be regarded as the remnant of the primary forest left, untouched by the local inhabitants due to the belief that deities reside in these forests 2 . How conservation of biodiversity through religious belief started in India is unknown. During the period of Rigveda (about 3,000-2,500 BC), people were preserving plants in temples. They were spreading the message of grow more trees 3 . The methodology involved in tracing the conservation strategies of forests in sacred groves were described 4 . Emphasis was given to ethnobotanical aspects of conservation and management of plant resource. These include studies on preservation of forest in the form of sacred groves. Reports have occasionally been appearing from Tamil Nadu and different regions of India on approaches to conservation of biodiversity through indigenous religious belief and taboo, but there is no detailed information of this area. The paper is perhaps the first detailed record on the floristic composition and ethnobotanical practices on the unreported sacred groves of Pallapatty village, Madurai district, Tamil Nadu.