THE FOREST FLORA OF NORTH-WEST AND CENTRAL INDIA: A HANDBOOK OF THE INDIGENOUS TREES AND SRHUBS COMMENCED BY THE LATE J. LINDSAY STEWART, M.D. CONSERVATOR OF FORESTS, PUNJAB, CONTINUED AND COMPLETED BY DIETRICH BRANDIS, PH.D. INSPECTOR-GENERAL OF FORESTS TO THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. PREPARED AT THE HERBARIUM OF THE ROYAL GARDENS, KEW, Published under the Authority of the Secretary of State for India in Council. LONDON: WM. H. ALLEN & CO., 13 WATERLOO PLACE, S.W. PREFACE. THE object of this work is entirely practical. As Forest administration in India advanced, the want of handbooks was felt, to enable forest officers to acquire a knowledge of the trees and shrubs in the forests, and of the climbers, epiphytes, and other plants which impede and injure the growth of trees. This want has led to the preparation of three works. First, The Flora Sylvatica of Madras, by Lt.-Col. R. H. Beddome, head of the Forest Department in that Presidency, commenced in 1868 and completed in 1873. It contains 325 plates of trees, with full descriptions, and a Manual giving a systematic account of 76 Natural Orders, comprising all trees and the more important shrubs of South India and Ceylon; 27 additional plates, with the analysis of 146 genera not figured in the work, are appended. Second, The Forest Flora of British Burma, by Sulpiz Kurz, Curator of the Herbarium at Calcutta, now under preparation. Third, The present work. When these three books are complete, they will comprise descriptions of most trees, a knowledge of which is needful to foresters, in British India. Thus the trees of the Bombay forests will be found either in Colonel Beddome's or in this work; and the more important trees of the Eastern Himalaya and Eastern Bengal will probably occur, some in this book, others in the Burma Flora. Eventually a Forest Flora of Bengal and Assam, and another of the Bombay Presidency, with local habitats and vernacular names, may become necessary; but at present the requirements of foresters in the different provinces of India will be sufficiently met by the publication of these three works. The geographical limits of this Flora are necessarily artificial. The object was to give an account of the arborescent vegetation in the forest tracts of the Panjab, the North-West Provinces, and of those forests in the Central Provinces which are situated on the Maikal and Satpura range of mountains. The northern limit may be defined as the arid treeless zone of the inner Himalaya; while to the south the territory is bounded by the open forestless plain which skirts the base of the Maikal and Satpura range from Bilaspur to Berar. The western limit is the Panjab frontier, |