Indian Pandanaceae: Present Status and Need of Revision

Abstract

The Pandanaceae are represented in India by a single genus, Pandanus Parkinson, distributed in South and Northeast India (Nadaf et al. 2011; Zanan and Nadaf 2012a, b). Taxonomic treatment of Pandanaceae of India began with Rheede (1679), who described in Hortus Malabaricus four species of Pandanus, viz., Kaida (P. kaida Kurz.), Kaida Taddi (P. odorifer (Forssk.) Kuntz.), Perin Kaida Taddi (P. canaranus Warb.), and Kaida Tsjeria (P. furcatus Roxb.). Later, in 1893, Hooker described P. unguifer from Mungpoo hills in the Darjeeling district of West Bengal. St. John, in his studies on Indian Pandanaceae, reported in 1965 a new species, P. assamensis from Assam, followed by the reports of five new species in 1972 – P. diversus, P. emarginatus, P. katatonos, P. nepalensis, and P. sikkimensis – from the Northeastern part of India. In Wealth of India (1966), 36 species of Pandanus are mentioned; however, a detailed list is not given. Vartak (1981) reported an exotic cultivated species, P. amaryllifolius found throughout India. In 1989, Karthikeyan et al. confirmed 19 Pandanus species from India. This was followed by the report of P. dubius (Keller 2001) and rediscovery of P. unguifer from Mungpoo in the Darjeeling district of West Bengal (Srivastava 1997; Srivastava and Chaudhary 2007). In a detailed exploration and survey, we reported three new species: P. palakkadensis from Palakkad, Kerala state (Nadaf et al. 2011), P. mangalorensis from Mangalore, Karnataka state (Zanan and Nadaf 2012a), and P. martinus from the foothills of West Siang district of Arunachal Pradesh and Dhimaji district of Assam (Zanan and Nadaf 2012b). Thus, the family is described by several taxonomists and the total number of species belonging to Pandanaceae has not been reported. Further, there is no information available on the subgeneric and sectional levels or the phylogenetic relationship among the Indian Pandanus species.