Tree diversity, congruence and endemism: Himalaya ‘The land of diversity’

Trees are acknowledged as most valued gift of nature and saviour of earth, enhancing and protecting landscapes, ecosystems and production systems. An authentic database of tree flora missing from local to global scale has immense value. Formulation of conservation and management policies are difficult owing to huge variation in number of species, lack of tree cover and quantification of tree diversity. To endow with a pragmatic groundwork for quantification of tree diversity of IHR, we had published an inventory of 1466 tree species (Angiosperms and Gymnosperms) along with their taxonomically vetted scientific name, distributional range, phenological attributes (leaf persistence and flower colour), use value, congruence, endemism and threatened species. One more database on tree diversity of Western Himalaya was also published with an annotated list of tree flora compiled from unrestricted literature and e-floras related to the regions. The present paper is an attempt to bring out the overall representation of tree flora of IHR, its distributional pattern, congruence, and endemism criterion in Western and Eastern Himalaya along with correlation between the regions as well as states.