DIVERSITY AND CONSERVATION OF PLANT RESOURECES OF TIRUMALAIAH GUTTA SACRED GROVE, WANAPARTHY, TELANGANA, INDIA

Tirumalaiah Gutta sacred grove is situated near Wanaparthy, Telanagana with dry deciduous and scrub forests and huge rock boulders. The study yields a total of 467 taxa belonging to 283 genera and 81 families. Of the 467 taxa, 332 are dicots, 129 are monocots and 6 are pteridophytes. Of the 81 families, Poaceae is the largest family with 77 taxa, followed by Fabaceae (51), Cyperaceae (25), Asteraceae (24), Rubiaceae (19) and Acanthaceae (18). A total number of 34 endemic taxa at different levels are recorded of which, Alysicarpus mahabubnagarensis is endemic to Mahabubnagar district, Chryopogon velutinus is endemic to Kadapa district of Andhra Pradesh, Rathnagiri hills of Maharashtra and Wanaparthy district of Telangana; Euphorbia senguptea and Rostellularia vahlii var. rupicola are endemic to Eastern Ghats. From the inventory it has been resulted in a total of 16 taxa which was identified and found as addition to the flora of Telangana state after a perusal of literature. Ceropegia spiralis, Caralluma stalagmifera, Tripogon purpurascens, Chrysopogon velutinus are some of the significant taxa of the study. Good number of insectivorous plants were also recorded from the study area. The “Sanjeevani” is mythical herb mentioned in the Ramayana as a wonderful medicinal plant was present in this area. A total number of 382 taxa can be considered as economically important.


INTRODUCTION
Biodiversity is the totality of genes, species and ecosystem in a region. Biodiversity interacting with the physical environment form the foundation of sustainable development. The worldwide destruction of the natural environment by population explosion, urbanization, industrialization and habitat fragmentation has led to a tremendous loss of biological diversity over the past few decades. Population pressures and concomitant unscientific and unsustainable extraction of resources especially of timber, medicinal herbs, fuel wood and fodder from forests has alarming consequences on conservation of these resources. Overexploitation is likely to severely reduce the population sizes below the critical level and consequently the survival of the species per sec. Flora refers to "the plants present in a particular geographic region or an area at a particular time, generally the naturally occurring or indigenous plants". Such flora will serve as documented inventory of plants and as a historic datasets for future monitoring of native plant species. According to conservation biologists, 25% of all species could become extinct during the next 20-30 years. The cause for the loss of species is numerous but the most important is the loss and fragmentation of natural habitats. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is the world's main authority on the conservation status of species (1). The 2008 update of the IUCN Red List cover 44,838 species including 8,457 plant species classified under different threats. The existing information on Endemic, Rare, Endangered and Threatened (ERET) species is very thin and often provides inadequate data. There is a need to revive the red lists based on sound datasets as opined (2,3). In the context of unabated loss of biodiversity due to human interference, plant taxonomists throughout the world are documenting flora at different levelsnational, regional, local, etc.

NEED OF STUDY
Sacred groves are the patches of native vegetation traditionally protected by local communities, and are unique, and significant, examples of in situ biodiversity conservation (4). The nature of religiousness associated with sacred groves suggests that the practice of sacred groves dates back to the nomadic hunter-gatherer age of human history (5). It is generally believed that, owing to their religious significance, sacred groves are better protected and managed, and hence harbor richer plant diversity than other forests (6), though this has not been substantiated through systematic floristic and quantitative studies.
Tirumalaiah Gutta sacred grove is situated near Wanaparthy, Telanagana. No floristic and conservation works were done in this sacred grove. Hence the present work has undertaken.

STUDY AREA
Wanaparthy is one of the districts of Telangana situated in southern part. The name of town itself indicates that, once upon a time it was with forests (Vanam-Forest; Parthy-Village). Tirumalaiah Gutta is one of the sacred groves of Telangana located 5 km away from Wanaparthy town. The lord Venkateswara is in the name of Tirumalanatha swamy present at the top of the hill worshipped by the local people for the past 300 years (Plate-1). According to the history of Wanaparthy Samsthan, the temple was built by the Raja Wanaparthy in 18 th century. Sravanamasam (August-September) of every year nearly 2lakhs of people visited this temple.
The climate of the study area is that January, February and March months are pleasant with moderate winds from southeast with an average temperature varies from 24˚ to 28˚C. April and May are the hottest months of the year with the mean temperature of 35˚C-45˚C. The maximum temperature during this season ranges between 45˚C and 26˚C. During the succeeding four months, the wind blows from western side and brings fairly good rainfall. By the end of September, the wind is light and pleasant forecasting the onset of north-east monsoon. From November to February the temperature falls as low as 10˚C. The average rainfall of Tirumalaiah Gutta is about 100cm and is mostly due to south-west monsoon.

METHODOLOGY
The present study aims at a first ever systematic attempt towards a fine scale assessment of the plant resources of Tirumalaiah Gutta Sacred Grove based on filed explorations. Field explorations were conducted intensively for a period of 3 years, during 2013-2016 covering all the seasons. All the plant taxa encountered in the sampled quadrates were listed and representative specimens of every taxon were collected in quadruplicates. Specimens were then poisoned, dried and were made into herbarium according to methodology described by Santapau (7), Jain and Rao (8), Forman and Bridson (9). Identification of the specimens was done by the following Gamble and Fischer (10), Pullaiah (11) and further confirmed in certain cases, by comparing with the herbarium material housed at SKU; Botanical Survey of India Deccan Regional Circle, Hyderabad (BSID). A critical care should be taken in the confirmation of endemic, threatened taxa and new distributional records. Every attempt has been made in to study the habitat, soil, elevation, vegetation type, associates etc., which were recorded carefully in the field itself. With the help of local people and based on secondary literature, plants with medicinal importance were identified and the relevant information is documented.
All the endemic and threatened taxa recorded from the area were revisited with update population numbers. Apart from the recorded threatened taxa, significant taxa under different threat have also been analyzed following the latest version (3.1) of IUCN threat categories. The threatened and important endemic species were collected and grown in the Botanical Garden of Government Degree College, Wanaparthy and the sapling were distributed to the plant lovers.
Awareness is needed to conserve any biological resources at any point especially for local people who are residing in the forests or very near to forest areas. The importance of flora and fauna of Tirumalaiah Gutta and its conservation was explained by the research team headed by Dr.
Sadasivaiah, to the local people through printed pamphlets, print and electronic media especially at the time of heavy pilgrimage. A team of 80 students along with Forest Department officials were checked and eradicated all the plastic covers and other plastic materials from the pilgrims and vendors at the time of Sravanamasam. All the collected plastic covers were deposited at Municipal Office, Wanaparthy.

Floristic Analysis
In the present study, a total number of 467 wild and naturalized vascular plant taxa comprising 457 species and 10 intraspecific taxa were recorded in Tirumalaiah Gutta Sacred Grove. They are included in 283 genera and 81 families. Of the 467 taxa, 332 (71%) were dicots (208 genera), 129 (27.6%) were monocots (69 genera) and 6 (1.2%) were pteridophytes (06 genera). The enumerated species are presented in Table-1. Dicotyledons  66  208  383  Monocotyledons  09  69  129  Pteridophytes  06  06  21  Total  81  283  467 All the recorded 467 taxa are presented in Table-2 along with their botanical name, family and use value. All the taxa are arranged in alphabetical order by their families. The use value is abbreviated.

Analysis of Families and Genera
Analysis at family level revealed that Poaceae is the largest family with 77 taxa, followed by Fabaceae (51), Cyperaceae (25), Asteraceae (24), Rubiaceae (19) and Acanthaceae (18). Of the 81 families recorded in the present study, 34 are monotypic, viz., represented by only one species. Of these, 24 are dicot families, 3 are monocots and 6 are pteridophytes. A total of 09 families are represented with two species, 32 are represented by 3-15 species. The significant plant taxa are represented in Plate 4-7. Seven herbaceous families are represented with more than 10 genera. Poaceae is the largest family with 42 genera followed by Asteraceae (23), Fabaceae (19), Cyperaceae (14), Acanthaceae (11), Asclepiadaceae (11) and Rubiaceae (10). The top 10dominant families are presented in Fig. 1.   Fig. 1. Top 10 dominant families

Endemic taxa
A total of 34 endemic taxa at different levels (up to the level of Peninsular India) are recorded

New distributional records
The inventory has resulted in a total of 16 taxa are identified and found as addition to the flora of Telangana state after a perusal of literature. The details are provided in Table-

Ceropegia spiralis
This species is reported endemic plant of Peninsular India (Ahembedullah & Nayar, 1987), distributed in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. In Andhra Pradesh, the species is restricted to Kadapa hills. The present study revealed that it is found in Tirumalaiah Gutta sacred grove. This collection forms the second report of the taxon from different locality after Beddome's collection and extended its distribution from Kadapa to Wanaparthy.

Caralluma stalagmifera
Caralluma stalagmifera was first described by Fischer from Madras. The distribution of Caralluma stalagmifera is Eastern Peninsular India, from Visakhapatnam (Andhra Pradesh) to Ramanthapuram (Tamil Nadu). In the present investigation it is also recorded from the study area.
Hence this forms new distributional record for Telangana State.

Grasses
Tripogon purpurascens was reported from Anantapur and Viziayanagaram districts of Andhra Pradesh, as new distributional record for Peninsular India (13). The present study resulted in its extended distribution from Northern Eastern Ghats to study area. Hence it can be considered as second report for the Peninsular India.
A total of 10 speccies of Chrysopogon is recorded from Telangana State (11), six of them are rare in distribution and collection is very poor including Chrysopogon velutinus. According to type specimens housed at Herbarium Royal Botanic gardens, Kew, it was collected by Robert Wight in early 19 th century around 1819-1826 from Appayapalle in Kadapa district, which was in Mysore state (Presently in Andhra Pradesh) and by Meebold in September 1910 from Badami of Belgam district, which was in Bombay Presidency (Presently in Karnataka state). Recently 18 th November 2010 it was recollected from Badami plateau (14) but there is no subsequent collection of this from Andhra Pradesh, even though many workers sieved the area in their floristic works.
Recently, our team collected this from the study area. The present collection is the subsequent collection after Wight in Andhra Pradesh with gap of 150 years and far away from earlier locality.

Insectivorous Plants
A total of 9 insectivorous plants recorded from entire Telangna state by Pullaiah (11) of them Drosera burmannii, D. indica, Utricularia aurea, U. caerulea, U. scandens are reporting from the study area. The richness of insectivorous plants indicated that the study area is with less environmental pollution.  Table 2. Graphical representation for these taxa presented in Fig. 2.   (15), they reported more than 16 species under fodder value, and some of them are recorded in the present investigation.

Wild Relatives of Crop plants
A total of nine Wild relatives to crop plants are reported from the study area. Oryza rufipogon is the very close relative to cultivated Oryza sativa and belongs to primary gene pool (16). Pennisetum pedicillatum is relative of Pearl millet distributed in Tirumalaiah Gutta sacred grove. Panicum repens, P. trypheron are the wild relative species for proso millet, Panicum sumatrense. Out of five wild relatives for Italian millet reported from Telangana, Three of them Setaria intermedia, S. pumila and S. verticillata are recorded from the present study. Paspalum vaginatum is the one wild relative of Kodo millet. The kodo millet, Paspalum scrobilatum is commonly found near marshy areas of the study area.
Vigna aconitifolia and V. trilobata are the genetic resource species for Dolichos. Sesamum radiatum is the important genetic resource species for Sesamum orientale. Memordica dioica is the genetic resource potential species for bitter guard. Solanum melongena var. insanum is the wild relative of Brinjal and it is used as vegetable by tribal people resided in Nallamalais (12). Cajanus scarabaeioides is wild relative of Cajanus cajan.

Wild ornamentals
In the present study a total of 33 wild plants with ornamental value are recorded. Some of them are already domesticated for the purpose of gardens and domestic uses. Aloe vera, Barleria cristata, Crinum asiaticum, C. defixum are commonly cultivated in gardens and in houses. The remaining species are having good ornamental properties. Some of them are potted in our college botanical garden. The members of Acanthaceae, Barleria cristata, B. prionitis are shows good reproductive capacity through stem cuttings.
The species of Pancratium longiflora, P. triflorum and other Pancratium spp. are potential ornamental plants with underground bulbs. The flowers of these species are of showy and large. Very less amount of water is needed for the cultivation of these species. There is an urgent need to domesticate these species and can improve the economy of the local people. Reddy et al. (17) reported 356 plants with ornamental value from the forests of Kadapa. Dendrocalamus strictus is used for many things.

Conservation aspects
A total of 123 species of 455 individuals are growing in the Botanical Garden of Government Degree College (Men), Wanaparthy and some of them are distributed to the plant lovers in the special occasions like Environmental Day, Biodiversity Day etc.
As a part of our research work nearly 800 kg of plastic covers and plastic materials were collected from pilgrims and venders at the time of Sravanamasam in the year 2012. The amount of plastic covers and plastic materials are slowly decreasing following years. In 2016 a total of 123 kg of plastic materials were collected and deposited in the Municipality office at Wanaparthy. The above result indicates the impact of awareness programmes conducted by the research team.

Conservation strategies
The field observations have strengthened that the herbs are habitat specific especially in the case of Insectivorous plants, some medicinal plants and lithophytes. Forests that are relatively undisturbed seem to possess these varied habitat conditions more. Human disturbance is high in western parts of the sacred grove than eastern part.
Ex-situ maintenance is one of the strategies to conserving the plants. This is mainly in gardens, germ-plasm banks. In the present investigation a total of 94 wild plants are conserving in the Botanical garden of Government Degree College (Men), Wanaparthy. The following key strategies are proposed for effective conservation of plant resources in Tirumalaiah Gutta sacred grove based on the present work sampling inventory. 4. Regular monitoring of plant resources of the study area is needed especially in the month Sravanamasam (August-September), where the pilgrim pressure is high.

5.
A highly coordinated action-oriented multidisciplinary approach on plant resources conservation integrating the forest department, Non-Governmental Organizations, scientific bodies at universities, Colleges and research institutions with the co-operation of local communities should be implemented.
6. The area with insectivorous plants needs to be prioritized and conserved by the forest department.
The information accumulated in the present work will be disseminated to the state forest department for further action. The information on threatened plant taxa will be intimated to Botanical Survey of India and IUCN, Plant Specialist Group of Indian Sub-Continent.

CONCLUSION
The present study on plant resources of Tirumalaiah Gutta, one of the sacred groves in Telangana has yielded significant results. A total of 467 plant taxa were recorded belonging to 283 genera and 81 families. A total of 16 species are additions to the flora of Telangana state indicated that rich diversity is present in the study area. Of the 81 families recorded in the study area, 34 are monotypic. The dominant family is Poaceae with 77 taxa indicating that the available resources are utilizing by them. A good number of endemic taxa recorded from the study area represent that there is an urgent need to conserve.
Of the 467 plant taxa recorded from the study area, 382 taxa are having on or other use value. Of these, 175 taxa (46%) used as medicinal, 21 (6.8%) are edible, 110 (28.7%) with fodder value, 09 (2.3%) are genetic resource for crop plants, 23 (6%) with ornamental value, 07 (1.8%) with timber value and 20 taxa (5.2%) of miscellaneous uses. A total of 20 taxa are considered threatened in the present study based on the field observations.
We have to protect and conserve the medicinal plants like Selaginella bryopteris (Sanjeevani), Ceropegia spiralis (Nimmatayi), Chlorophytum tuberosum (Safed Musli), Gymnema sylvestre (Podapatri), Asparagus racemosus (Sathavari). Even though many species of Poaceae, Cyperaceae and Fabaceae are used as fodder among them Alysicarpus hamosus, Chrysopogon velutinus are the important and are palatable in all stages of its life. There is a need to develop hybrids from these and to overcome the scarcity of fodder. Chrysopogon velutinus is a very rare grass relocated after 150 years from Eastern Ghats and it need to be reintroduce in the similar habitats of the study area and also Eastern Ghats due to its low population.
Instead of using the exotic species of Pancratium and Crinum as ornamentals, better to use our own species like Pancratium logiflora, P. triflorum, Crinum asiaticum, C. defixum and other species of Pancratium and Urginea, which are suitable to our environmental conditions.
If we conserve and utilize these medicinal, fodder and ornamentals the economy of local people will be increased. This area is rich in medicinal plants hence it should be recognized as Medicinal Plant Conservation Area (MPCA) by the Forest Department. The presence of Insectivorous plants, wild edibles, ornamentals, wild relatives to the crop plants indicate that this is the better area for biological tours at school and college level. Action should be taken to protect the plant resources at the time of Sravanamasam due to the heavy pressure from the pilgrims.
A highly coordinated action-oriented multidisciplinary approach on potential plant resources conservation integrating the forest department, Non-Governmental Organizations, scientific bodies with the co-operation of local communities should be launched at the earliest.