Qualitative and Quantitative Seed Characteristics Diversity from Girnar Reserve Forest, Gujarat, India

Abstract

Seeds of 97 plant species were studied for morphological characteristics after collection during botanical field visits from Girnar Reserve Forest, Gujarat, India. There was a significant variation in quantitative characters of seeds, while qualitative traits also exhibited great diversity. Seeds of trees showed highest values for all quantitative features measured as volume, length, width, thickness and weight among all other botanical group such as climbers, herbs, undershrubs and shrubs during the study. The range of seed volume varied from 0.01 to 21.48 cm3 for 63 trees, 0.23 to 1.42 cm3 for 12 herbs, 0.31 to 0.72 cm3 for 10 undershrubs, 0.35 to 0.93 cm3 for 9 shrubs, and 0.37 to 1.77 cm3 for 3 climbers. Fruiting time varied for species within groups, but mostly for all plants seed collection time was during dry season after fruit ripening. In the principal component multivariate analysis, only one principal component had an Eigen value above one and hence found significant, which explained 73 % morphological variation in the whole data set. The separation of 97 species using PCA and cluster analysis mostly in agreement with their group specific taxonomical identification of each plant. This study not only provided information related to seed morphology and taxonomy, but can be used effectively in diversity study as well as social forestry programmes.