A Review on Plant Phenology Study in Different Forest Types of India

Abstract

The authors had gone through several findings in plant phenological research throughout the globe and emphasized in its development in Indian subcontinent. They had gathered data from published literatures (n=34) and analysed the phenological behaviour of four forest types of the country. The forest types include Tropical Evergreen Forest (TE), Tropical Dry deciduous Forest (TD), Sub-tropical Humid Forest (SH) and Tropical Moist deciduous Forest (TM). From the analysis, it was found that different forest types had diversified phenological behaviour from species to species, elevation to elevation and forest type to forest type. However, cumulatively peak leafing and flowering was found in the month of April in all the forest types except TM that had peak leafing in the month of March and flowering in February and August. Fruiting peak in TE was June and August, TD was July, SH was October and TM was February and March. Further, there was significant positive relationship (p<0.05) observed in leafing with flowering (r=0.611) and leafing with fruiting (r=0.577) in TE, leafing with flowering (r=0.859) in SH where as negative relationship was observed in flowering with fruiting (r=-0.85) in TD which indicated synchrony among phenophases. This information bears much importance for future phenological studies in India reducing the research gap in this field.