Charophytes in time and space: zonal distribution pattern

Abstract

SummaryThe communication deals with the composition of charophyte flora of the world distributed into eight zones, viz., North American, South American, African, European, Asian, Indian Subcontinent, Pacific Island region, and Australian. The extent of similarities in the flora between each zone and the rest has been indicated. Depending on the extent of world distribution, charophyte taxa have been categorized into four groups namely, cosmopolitan, sub-cosmopolitan, restricted and endemic.Among all the zones, the Indian Sub-continent is found to have comparatively maximum number of taxa. It is interesting to note that the flora of the majority of zones contains almost invariably the next maximum number of the constituent taxa which are also found in the Indian Sub-continent, inspite of their distant geographical position from the latter zone. The importance of recording specific geographical position of the localities with exact altitude, latitude, longitude together with some ecological parameters like ...