Plant Life in the Vindhyans

Abstract

The possibility of the existence of plant life in the Vindhyans is a century-old problem and it begins with the report of the discovery of coal by Franklin (1833)1. Since then investigations have been carried out by various workers, though no definite existence of vascular plants in the Vindhyans could be established until 1950, when Ghosh and Bose2 reported on their recovery of pitted woods and monolete spores in an Olive shale of the Semri Series (lower Vindhyans). Three years later, Jacob, Jacob and Shrivastava3 found, in specimens of Jones's original collection of Suket shales, fragments of woody elements and five or six types of spores belonging probably to the primitive pteridosperms and pteridophytes and to doubtful primitive gymnosperms. They did not, however, recover winged spores or those with surface ornamentation in their material.