Forest Botany Series Indian Forest Memoirs On some Forest Grasses and their Oecology

In many parts of India with the increase in the numbers and in the prosperity of the local population of recent years the number of cattle for which grazing is required in the Government Forests has steadily risen and the question of what measures are to be taken in order to satisfy as far as possible the urgent needs of the people with regard to fodder and grazing without thereby unduly decreas [...] While recognising therefore the vital importance of this study the magnitude and difficulty of the work must be apparent to the most casual observer; involving as it does a detailed knowledge of all the living and non-living factors of a plant's environment of the way in which and of the extent to which each such factor is capable of influencing favouably or unfavourably the growth and devel [...] The production of good seed and vigorous seedlings also in many cases depends on the existence of the birds and insects by which the cross-pollination of the flowers is effected 1 Humus acts es a weak cement and holds together the particles of soil thus it serves both to binds coarse-grained sandy soil and by forming aggregates of the f nest particles to render the texture of a clay soil more [...] While we may therefore utilise such words as xerophilous and hygrphilous as useful terms conveying some idea of the characteristics of a form of vegetation of some of the conditions of its environment and of the way in which the economy of the plant is adapted to these conditions we must continually guard against the idea that the available water supply has necessarily been the dominant facto [...] The needs of different species in sespect of the quantity and quality of various mineral salts of the quantity of oxygen for respiration of the intensity of light for assimilation and of temperature undoubtedly vary considerably and we should therefore naturally expect to find considerable differences 111 the nature and magnitude of the adaptations exhibited by different species in response [ 20