Methodology

Field work

Study area composed of variety of vegetation which covers coastal, aquatic, agricultural, riparian, waste land, village and urban areas of the Karaikal district. Intensive exploration trips were undertaken for about last one year. Field trips were made at frequent intervals especially to obtain a through collection of ephemerals and staggered over different seasons, namely, post-monsoon (January to March), summer (April to June), pre-monsoon (July to September) and monsoon (October to December). Special attention was given to data relating to habit, habitat, association with other plants, frequency, ecological features, height of the plants, color of the flower and fruit, local names, local uses, etc. Further every attempt was made to study each plant by its phenology, relative abundance and distribution.

Each specimen was be carefully examined in natural conditions, identify taxonomically using publications of Gamble and Fischer (1915-1936), Henry et al (1989) and Matthew (1982; 1983; 1988; 1991 and 1999) as well as use of various floras, monographs and revisions, provisional identification will be made. Botanical nomenclature followed in the text conforms to the Flora of Tamil Nadu by Nair and Henry (1983); Henry et al (1987, 1989). The fresh specimens will be soaked in 1 % formaldehyde and processed in to Herbarium specimens were followed the standard methods (Henry et al., 1989; Forsberg & Sachet, 1965). These herbarium sheets were mounted and deposited in the herbarium of plant science laboratory of Avvaiyar Government College for women, Karaikal.

Herbarium Work

Identification was confirmed after matching the specimens with authentic or type specimens in Madras Herbarium (MH), Coimbatore and Central National Herbarium, Howrah (CAL). The nomenclature of the plants has been up-to-date by strict application of the rules as given in the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature (Voss et al, 1983). Further, every attempt was made to check the identity of plants by the way of type method and evaluate the taxonomic status of the taxa concerned. Illustrations and photographs will be presented to serve as field guide for future investigators.

Preparation of E-flora

Present work is using a web interface to the database to dynamically create web pages. Users can browse treatments by family, genus and species. Users may query the database by taxon name, commune, adjacent places, and vegetation. Whole plant images in live conditions and its habitats, close-up view of floral parts, important features of identification, herbariums, distribution data, ecological data, taxonomic notes, local vernacular names, economic importance of all the plant species were databased using MS-Access database software as backend. Visual basic (VB) will be a middleware act as a server and Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) becomes a front end for display. This database is user friendly and installable version as well as network dependent. Data in the form of text, numbers and images are included in the database.