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The freshwater rockpools support high endemic biodiversity but are poorly studied habitats in the Western Ghats biodiversity hotspot. These freshwater rock pools are situated on outcrops at various elevations in the Western Ghats and are composed of different bedrocks such as laterite and basalt. We aimed to analyze the water quality, geographical position based differences in the water chemistry and the role of bedrock in determining the water chemistry of the rock pools. Our study showed a wide range of water quality variables such as pH, conductivity, and ionic contents that attributed to the natural variation. We observed a drastic variation in the anions and cations at low elevation pools. Rock type and precipitation are influencing the ionic concentration; for example, Calcium and Bromide could be attributed to the seasonal precipitation and geomorphology. This documentation of physicochemical properties of the Western Ghats rock pools can form a baseline for further detailed studies.

The Western Ghats of India support a significant amount of biodiversity despite heavy habitat loss. The northern part of this biodiversity hot-spot, along with Konkan, is considerably different from its southern and central counterparts on account of lesser precipitation and extended dry season. Though this region has been floristically surveyed well, there was a long need for a synthesis on local endemism of the flowering plants. Therefore, the present work was undertaken to produce an updated list of the local endemic plant species of the region with an analysis of habitat characteristics and their survival strategies. An extensive review of literature, herbarium records, and field studies yielded a checklist of 181 taxa including four monospecific genera which were examined for their distribution across their latitudinal spread and habitat specificity. A majority of the endemics are therophytes with their predominance, especially on rock outcrops. Northern Western Ghats seems to be the center of rapid diversification of certain herbaceous endemic genera like Ceropegia, Glyphochloa, Dipcadi, Eriocaulon and a few others. Despite being declared as a biodiversity hot-spot and having a higher concentration of endemic taxa, the region is underrepresented in global IUCN threat status assessments. The implication of effective conservation measures is necessary and the data presented in the manuscript can be used as a proxy for conservation planning.

Floristic and taxonomic community may miss out certain species from their surveys resulting in treating them under threatened categories based on dearth of representations in collections. However, such plants are likely to be recognized adequately by traditional knowledge if these plants have some known utilities. Knowledge about plant resources with forest dwelling human communities is a key constituent of their traditional knowledge, and harnessing natural resources sustainably has been a part of their lifestyle for centuries. We discuss here an example of a grass Dichanthium jainii (Deshp. & Hemadri) Deshp., endemic to Sahyadri, Northern Western Ghats, which is placed under threatened plant category Endangered (EN) owing to its underrepresentation in collections. However, the plant is used by local inhabitants of Northern Western Ghats as a roof thatching material for many generations. This grass is not only conserved by them in situ, but also planted for domestic use by every household. The paradoxical situation of its threat status, based on herbarium studies, and its much larger extent of occurrence in reality, is a result of overlooking traditional knowledge in taxonomic surveys. This paper appeals that traditional knowledge can also be taken as one of the sources while reassessing status of threatened plants.

The genus Ischaemum Linnaeus (1753: 1049) was established with two species, viz. I. muticum Linnaeus (1753: 1049) and I. aristatum Linnaeus (1753: 1049). At present, the genus comprises ca. 71 species distributed in warm and tropical regions of the world (Mabberley 2008). It is represented by 56 species in India of which 43 species are endemic (Srivastava & Nair, 2010). In recent years, the genus has attracted the attention of many researchers for novelties in taxonomy (Gorade et al. 2016, Sunil et al. 2017), distribution (Datar et al. 2014) and nomenclature (Tiwari et al. 2016).