Floristic composition and life form spectrum analysis of vascular plants growing in Gargi College campus, University of Delhi, Delhi-49.

Floristic diversity is specific for an ecological area and plays an important role in every ecosystem. The present study deals with floristic composition and life form analysis of vascular plants, which grow in Gargi college campus and are compared with Raunkiaer's life form spectrum. The whole campus area was surveyed during 2018 to 2019 for the record of plant specimens. Plant species growing wild as well as cultivated have been listed belonging to vascular plants (angiosperm, gymnosperm and pteridophyte). A total of 199 plant species of 172 genera and 69 families were recorded, including 2 pteridophytes, 7 gymnosperms and 190 angiosperms (23% monocots and 77% dicots). Fabaceae was found as the most dominant family in the flora of the project area that contributed 17 species, followed by Apocynaceae (10 species), Asteraceae, Euphorbiaceae, Moraceae and Poaceae (9 species), Asparagaceae and Malvaceae (8 species), Arecaceae (7 species) while rest of the families shared 1-6 species. It was recorded that herbs were dominating fraction in the floristic composition that contributed 38%, followed by trees (32%), shrubs (16%), climbers (5%) and shrub to trees (4%), whereas rest of 4 categories were in the range of 3- 0.005%. Phanerophytes were the most abundant life form that constituted 55.28% of the total flora, followed therophytes by (29.15%), chamaephytes (6.53%), geophytes (5.03%) hemicryptophytes (3.02%), and hydrophytes (1.01%). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]