Flora and Ethnobotany of West Dinajpur District West Bengal

The book “Flora and Ethnobotany of West Dinajpur District, West Bengal” (at present Uttar Dinajpur and Dakshin Dinajpur districts) district deals with 877 angiospermic plant species under 536 genera belonging to 140 families along with a list of 21 pteridophytic plant species. Each taxon is incorporated with notes on distribution, phenology, collector’s name, field numbers, ethnobotanical uses, special notes etc. Efforts have been made to bring out the correct nomenclature as per the ICBN (Vienna code, 2007). Easy user’s keys for distinguishing the taxa have been incorporated. Ethnobotanical information are broadly categorized under 14 major groups as like Human medicine, Veterinary medicine, Food, Fodder, Dye, Narcotics, etc. This part of the book deals with a total of 288 taxa (about 33% of the total taxa of the district) belonging to 225 genera under 90 different families which are used by the 10 dominant tribal communities of the district viz., Santal, Munda, Oraon, Lohara, Sabar, Polly, Rabha, Lepcha, Bhutia, Hajang, in 583 different ways. The book will be highly beneficial to undergraduate and postgraduate students, research workers, teachers, experts in this field of Botanical study specially in Taxonomy of Angiosperms, Biodiversity, Conservation, Ecology, Ethnobiology, Forestry and others. The book will be helpful to prepare the long wanted floristic and ethnobotanical accounts of West Bengal and also to some extent in Indian perspective.