Floristic composition in Paramananda Devara Gudda A sacred grove at Lingadahalli Village Devadurga Taluk Raichur District Karnataka, India

Abstract

Sacred groves are an important feature of any preservation of diversity as they are ecological, cultural and medicinal assets. A survey conducted in this study aimed to determine floral diversity in the Paramananda Devara Gudda sacred grove utilizing Shannon–Wiener (SW = 4.29), Simpson’s Diversity (SD = 1.00) and Species Diversity (SD = 0.78). The analysis pointed out a number of genera, that is, Crotalaria and Indigofera having the most species (10 species of each) other than Blumea and Vachellia with 5 species each respectively. Other genera, which also pointed to the high diversities within the site included Cleome, Cyperus, Phyllanthus and Ziziphus. This grove is not only valuable in terms of having unique and outstanding features as ecological and cultural taxa, nitrogen-fixing plants including Indigofera and Crotalaria, Phyllanthus, Ocimum as medicinal plants, and multipurpose plants including Ziziphus. High indices are explained by the values of effective species equality and the species sharing minimal impacts, the low-representation genera match with called for conservation program. The Paramananda Devara Gudda is a holy grove performing vital ecosystem services of conservation and hence is a very important biore-cultural site. The present research focuses on the community approach to sustainable management of regional diversity and cultural resources.