flora of pakistan

192 Pages·2013·8.27 MB·English

FLORA OF PAKISTAN
EDITORS:
E. NASIR
National Herbarium (Stewart Collection)
Palustan Agricultural Research Council,
Islamabad
AND
S. I. ALI
Department of Botany, University of Karach,
Karach
HISTORY AND EXPLORATION OF PLANTS
IN PAKISTAN AND ADJOINING AREAS
R. R. STEWART
University of Michgan
Ann Arbor, USA.
March, 1982.

Printed at PanGraphics Ltd., Islamabad.
CONTENTS
Frontispiece.
Map of Punjab and Adjoining areas
1
Acknowledgements
3
Introduction
8
Sind
14
Baluchistan
28
Punjab
Rawalpindi District 38
Northwest Frontier Province
Peshawar and Khyber
Kurram Agency
Waziristan
Hazara
Malakand Division
Swat
Dir
Chitral
Azad Kashmir
Poonch
Hunza and Nagar
Baltistan and Ladak
Collectors
Vale of Kashmir
Fossil plants
Jammu
Flora of Afghanistan and its relation to Pakistan
Pteridophyta
Musci
Hepaticae
AJgae

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My inspiration for writing a book which would include the history of plant
collecting and plant studies in Pakistan and adjacent regions came from 1. H.
Burlull's "Chapters on the history of botany in India" [In parts, 1963, and book
form, published by the Botanical Survey of India (1965)l. Since this book was
written I have consulted it hundreds of times and often wished that he had not
limited his history to the period up to 1900.
As this book is based on a life-time of work and I have had the privilege of
working in many places including India, Pakistan, Great Britain and the US-A.
and since I have known scores, if not hundreds of people, whose lives have touched
mine and provided me with botanical information and aid of some sort or the
other, I do not know where to begin and where to end in expressing my grati-
tude for services received. I am not a self-made man. I have had travel grants and
I have had research grants, the latter from the USA, National Science ~oundation
while working here at the University of Michigan. Since 1962 I have worked four-
teen summers at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, with visits to the British
Museum and Edinburgh and received help and encouragement everywhere.
As a young student at Columbia University (1907-1 1) I had scholarships
for four years and in 1917 I was given a Cutting Travelling Fellowship which
enabled me to collect plants for a year in the Punjab, Charnba and Kashmir. Since
1960, when I retired as Principal Emeritus of Gordon College, Rawalpindi, I have
been provided with a place to work in a corner of the frne herbarium of the Uni-
versity of Michigan and enjoyed the friendship and aid of the staff here.
In 1940 1 had gone to the USA. on regular furlough and intended to work
in the Herbarium of the New York Botanical Garden, naming specimens from India
which I had collected in the Himalayas. When the war prevented me from returning
to India, Dr. Robbins took me on the staff as Curator of Oriental plants until the
way opened for me to return to India in 1944.
Many of those who have cooperated with me and helped me in various ways
over the years are no longer living. I enjoyed the cooperation of the staff at Kew
for more than 60 years and felt as much at home there as I did at New York or
Michigan. Many thanks.
In Pakistan I haw enjoyed the friendship of the local botanists since 191 1
and those I have known the longest are Dr. Sultan Ahmad of Lahore and Prof.
E. Nasir of Rawalpindi. I have a great admiration for the scientific attainments of
them both, and appreciate their friendship and help. Prof. Nasir was fist my
student, then my colleague and then my successor at Gordon College. His work as
Joint Editor of the Flora of Pakistan has been outstanding and also his work as
Director of the National Herbarium. Dr. S. 1. Ali has done a fine piece of work in
preparing monographs of all of the genera of the Leguminosae and as Joint editor
of the Flora of Pakistan.
I would also like to put on record my appreciation of the great help the
authorities at Kew and Edinburgh have been in encouraging the Pakistanis anxious
to provide a flora for Pakistan. Mr. Brenan, the Director at Kew, has permitted
Mr. Thomas Cope, an agronomist to prepare the Pakistan grass flora and Mr. C. C.
Townsend has monographed the Ammanthaceae. Messers. B. L. Burtt, Ian Hedge
and Miss Jennifer Lamond have encouraged the editors of the Pakistan Flora by
readmg and editing the fascicles as they are prepared. Their generosity in helping
a new, Third World country deserves recognition.
Ralph R. Stewart
The author and the editors are grateful to the United States Department of
Agriculture for financing this project under PL.480.
FLORA OF PAKISTAN
HISTbRY AND EXPLORATION
RALPH R. STEWART*
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA.
Introduction
When we remember that there was no Pakistan until 1947 and that the new
country had to start from 'scratch' it is fortunate and wry creditable that a flora
for the whole. country is being produced, having begun on September 22, 1970
with the fmt fascicle of the flora, Flocourtkeue, by Yasin Nasir. This was issued
from the Stewart Herbarium, Gordon College, Rawalpindi under the joint Editor-
ship of Prof. b. Nasir and Dr. S. I. Ali. It is now 198 1 and 138 fascicles are in print
and have been distributed to the leading herbaria and botanical centres of the
world and appreciative reviews have been received from various countries. Special-
ists and plant geographers are pleased that another country will soon have a flora
and that gap in the knowledge of the flora of the world is being fded. Plant geo-
graphers are dependent upon such floras for the raw materials they need for the
completion of their studies.
The book which botanists have been using for their understanding of the
flora of Pakistan as a whole is the "Flora of British India" of Sir Joseph Hooker
and collaborators which was begun in 1872 and completed in 1897. The first
volume is now more than 100 years old and a tremendous amount of work has
been done on the plants of the subcontinent since that time. Hundreds of thou-
sands of additional plant specimens have been collected. A vast amount of literature
has been printed. Many new species have been described and some areas which were
little known are now well known. As the rules of plant nomenclature used today
were unknown in Sir Joseph's time and as numbers of large genera have been
divided, a good many of Hooker's names need to be changed. When will it be
brought up to date? Before 1947 there were two large herbaria in India. The very
old herbarium at Calcutta, founded in 1786 which is said to be the largest in
Asia and the herbarium of the Forest Research Institute at Dehra Dun, which
was formerly at Saharanpur and specializes in forest botany and the plants of
North India. Many collections from the Pakistan area are stored at Dehra Dun.
There were no large herbaria in the region which is now Pakistan. When I arrived
in India in 19 1 1 ,the College of Agriculture at Lyallpur had a collection to presem
specimens of agricultural interest and there was a small collection at the Govern-
ment College, Lahore. The D e b Dun Herbarium was too far away for me to use
and I did not find any one who knew the Punjab Flora from whom I could ask
questions until I found the Conservator of Forests in Lahore, Mr. R. N. Parker,
who was probably working on his Forest Fl~raa t the time. The first edition was
issued in 19 18 and I found it very useful. He was the only active taxonomists in
North Indla at the time. Prof. Kashyap of the University at Lahore worked chiefly
on liverworts.
* Now at Duarte, California.
In my early years in India my botanical work was teaching and collecting
plants during vacations and getting them named at the New York Botanical Garden
when I was home in the USA. on furlough. I collected plants in order to create
for myself a working collection which I could use in naming plants and to help me
in my teaching. I had no idea of providing a herbarium for public use. If one sticks
to a collecting hobby of any sort, however, the collection tends to grow from your
own collecting, and from gifts and exchanges. Over the years mall and large col-
lections from surprising places were given to me after the death of the original
collector or after the owner got tired of his collection. A YWCA. friend gave me
his father's collection of New Zealand ferns. An eady Director of the Punjab
Post and Telegraph Department, E. N. Trotter, had been an avid fern collector
between 1885 and 1890. Not only did he have many hundreds of specimens of
Indian ferns but he had a good collection of the ferns of Mauritius and Bourbon
and of the Island of St. Helena. Mahy years after he died, an heir gave me his ferns
and his books. Herbaria accumulate duplicates and the New York Botanical Garden
eve me some valuable Indian duplicates and the Royal Botanic Garden at Kew in
Eogland gave me large collection of Indian plants collected by J. F. Duthie of the
Botanical Survey of India. I helped a number of foreign plant collectors who came
to work' in the Himalayas and they gave me duplicates in return. Students and
members of staff brought in specimens, as interest tends to be catching. Some per-
haps wanted to please the Principal, a position I took over in 1934.
As the college grew in size we started B. Sc. classes in Botany and by offer-
ing prizes for the best collections of plants a good many useful specimens were
added each year, as students came from all sorts of places. From time to time it
becomes important to various people to know the scientific name of plants they
had some interest in, especially people interested in medicinal plants. One woman
came and said that she had been told that a certain plant named yarrow, was good
for asthma. She wanted to see what it looked like. Collectors of medicinal plants
came for identification of samples and from time to time a forester or someone
interested in agricultural plants needed identifications. A student tiom Karachi
came to study the borages we had in our collections. Without any plans to become
a reference centre,Gordon Colleg became one.
In 1960, wnen I w s 7 0, it was time for me to retire to the USA.,a ccording
to the rules of the aociety to which I belonged. The problem then arose as to the
future of the herbarium I had started which probably amounted to SOP00 speci-
mena. I had no thought of taking it away with me as its greatest use would natu-
rally be in W t a n . It was not a project of the college as a large herbarium was
not needed. One year I had a Cutting travelling fellowship from Columbia Uniwr-
dty but othemh I was responsible for the travelling expenses connected with my
collecting activities in all parts of K.ahmir and Pakistan. Part of the expense
wrr recouped by selling Herbarium specimens and Prof. Norir and I sold botanical
d zdogicrl m t d s t o colleges to use in their practical classes which we or an
ardrtrnt could cdlect,~R awalpindi, at the edge of the hills, was near sources of
supply of most of the materials prescribed by the University for study.
Fortunately for Prof. Nasir and the herbarium,he was now in charge of,
the U. S. Department of Agriculture was given the use of blocked funds belong-
ing to the U. S. Government which could be spent in Pakistan but which could
not be repatriated. The Agriculture 'Department officials developed a collecting
scheme for Pakistan, India, and a number of other countries where there were
such funds. The scheme was to make contacts with local scientists providing
them with funds which they were to use for sending our plant collectors in order
to gather plant materials with a reputation for being useful agriculturally, medi-
cinally or in any other way. A herbarium specimen of each collection with a sample
of the fibre, seeds or leaws had to be sent to Beltsville, Maryland for study. Prof.
Nasir sent out collectors for five years and made annual reports. No doubt on
account of diminishing returns this scheme was brought to an end about 1967 and
a new one started.
The new scheme was to provide Pakistan with a flora. In order to imple-
ment the plan, Dr. S. I. Ali and Prof. Nasir, appointed as Joint Editors and provi-
ded with funds for the work of artists, printing, typing, etc. The editors set to work
and, as already mentioned, the first fascicle was published in 1970 and the 139th
this year, 198 1 . Most of the small families have now been published and four large
ones, Umbellifeme by E. Nasir, Brassicaceae by S. M. H. Jafri, Mhaceae by Sul-
tanul Abedin and Papilionuceae by S. I. Ali. Dr. Thomas Cope of Kew, an agrosto-
logist, has completed work on the gasses and it should soon be published. Esti-
mates of the length of time necessary for such a work are usually less than is re-
quired for completion and it will probably take more than five years to complete
the flora. One reason for this is that the oil-rich countries have offered such large
salaries to the trained Pakistani botanists that most of the best men who have
collaborated in preparing the early fascicles have left Patistan.
In 1975 an important change took place in the management of the Stewart
Herbarium. The first 96 fascicles of the Flora of West Pakistan were issued by
"E. Nasir, Stewart Herbarium," while No. 97 of Jan. 1976 was published ''from
National Herbarium (Stewart Collection), Agricultural Research Council, Rawal-
pindi." The address of the Council is listed now as Islamabad. There is still no
Botanical Survey and I wonder how many people in Pakistan know that they have a
National Herbarium. This must be the first time a nation has besn given a National
Herbarium which is largely the work of two men.
What of the future? A National Herbarium should not only have a collection
of ferns and flowering plants, but should also be a laboratory for the study of
the socalled lower plants. Every country suffers from plant diseases and there
should be at least one plant pathologist and a good collection of fungi of all sorts.
In the large herbarium at the University of Michipn,where 1 work, half of the
space is given to the collections of fungi, mosses, liverworts, lichens and algae.
I only know of one person, Dr. Sultan Ahmad of Lahore, who had done much