Abstract

Kerala is endowed with a luxuriant vegetion, due to the varied climatic conditions. Neverthless there is no established herbaria in the State. Since the establishment of the institute, collections were made from the forest with a view to establish a reference herbarium of forest plants. In 1982 the work has been formulated in to a project with the duration of 5 years. The institute herbarium which now holds over 6000 specimens is recognised by the International Association of Plant Taxonomists (IAPT), and is known by the acronym KFRI. So far we have collected about 1, 400 species from the forest of Kerala, which forms about 58 of sthe forest flora. Among the collections there are 430 tree species which represents about 2/3 of the estimated 600 arborescent species. Besides the general collections the herbarium has a complete collection of medicinal plants of the forests and rattans of South India. The species in the herabrium are indexed in alphebetical order with collection numbers under respective plant families. From the forests of Trichur district which were intensely explored, several interesting plants were collected, including new taxa viz. Curcuma peethapushpa Sasi. & Sivaraj. (1989), Tarenna trichurensis Sasi. & Sivaraj. and Orophea malabarica Sasi. & Sivaraj. The new taxa and new records of occurrence emphasise the need for intensive exploratory studies of the forest flora of the State