Studies on the Flora of Singampatti Reserve Forest in Tirunelveli District, Madras State

A detailed study of the flora of Singampatti Reserve Forest has not been made so far and four seasonal exploration trips were made for the collection of plants in the year 1957-58.

The vegetation of this region consists of the scrub jungle type which extends to a height of about 300 M, the deciduous and grassland regions lying between 300 M to 1000 M and the evergreen forests appearing at a height of about 1000 M. The evergreen forests, however, get changed into the monsoon type above 1500 M. The Kakachi region which forms the highest peak in this area is the typical monsoon forest.

Plant collections were made at various places that had distinctly different ecological conditions and in all a total of 92 families represented by 320 genera, 432 species, native to or naturalized in the forest was found. The families with quite a large number of species are: Gramineae, Euphorbiaceae, Leguminosae, Acanthaceae, Cyperaceae, Compositae, Poly-podiaceae (sensu lato), Rubiaceae, Labiatae and Verbenaceae. These ten families contain 54.4 per cent of the total flora of the forest. The collections include species which are endemic to this area.