A new locality record for an endangered tree species Pittosporum eriocarpum Royle ( Pittosporaceae ) in India

Pittosporum eriocarpum Royle (Pittosporaceae) an endangered tree species is collected and reported for the first time from the Kangri, Dhamrol village of Bhoranj block which is quite near to Bhareri of Jahu road of district Hamirpur, Himachal Pradesh, North West Himalaya. This makes another locality record for an endangered tree species in the North West Himalaya. A detailed taxonomic description of the species along with colour photographs and specimens examined is presented in this paper to validate the new locality report and for easy identification of the species.


INTRODUCTION
Hamirpur (76º 18' to 76º 44' E and 31º 25' to 31º 52' N), is one of the smallest district of the Himachal Pradesh in terms of area but richest in terms of vegetation because it shares its boundary with district Kangra in the north, Bilaspur in the south, Mandi in the east and Una in the west.It is located in the south western part of Himachal Pradesh, North west Himalaya and the elevation varies from 400 to 1200 m amsl.The hilly tracts of district are totally covered by the famous Shivalik range and supports subtropical to temperate vegetations and offers congenial climatic conditions favourable for luxuriant growth of the vegetation including many rare, endangered species.While enumerating the floristics diversity of the district, an endemic, endangered tree species that is Pittosporum eriocarpum Royle has been collected from Kangri, Dhamrol village of Bhoranj block growing near the agricultural field which is quite near the Bhareri to Jahu road (Figure 1).Further, as per the previous reports, P. eriocarpum Royle is an endemic tree species restricted to Uttarakhand Himalaya (Osmaston, 1927;Kanjilal, 1928).Earlier records reported scarce population of P. eriocarpum in the lesser Himalayan range including Mussoorie hills and Doon Valley (Singh and Goel, 1999;Pundir et al., 2001;Padalia et al., 2010) in Uttarakhand state in and Chamba, Himachal Pradesh (Chowdhery and Wadhwa, 1984).Further based on the detailed literature and herbaria survey especially from Himachal Pradesh, it was reveals that P.eriocarpum Royle (family Pittosporaceae) was reported from only Chamba district, (Chowdhery and Wadhwa, 1984) *Corresponding author.E-mail: shreekarpant.2@rediffmail.com.and Rissa Khad Watershed near Riwalsar in Mandi district (Devi, 2013).The presence of this species in such area (locality) shows high conservation value of the Bharari village of Bhoranj block, and the presence of such species justify by the authors above said the localities is an interesting record.Further the species has been cited as Vulnerable in Red Data Book of Botanical Survey of India (Nayar and Shastri, 1987, 1988, and 1990) and as endangered by International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) World Conservation Monitoring Centre (WCMC, 1998) In the present study, a brief introduction about taxon, morphological descriptions, specimens examined, ecology and distribution of taxon have been provided for easy identification.The voucher specimens were deposited in the Herbarium (SP-HP-007), Centre for Biodiversity Studies, Baba Ghulam Shah Badshah University, Rajouri.
Pittosporum is a genus of about 200 species of flowering plants in the family Pittosporaceae.The genus is probably Gondwanan in origin; its present range extends from Australia, eastern Asia and some parts of Africa of which 12 species occur wild in India (Little et al., 1989).
Pittosporum is a small evergreen tree, upto 12 m in height, bark thin, light greenish grey; leaves loosely crowded towards the ends of the branches; lanceolate to elliptic oblong; flowers yellow; fragrant, much in branched corymbose or umbelliform clusters; capsules orange, slightly compressed; seed orange red, coated with a resinous, viscid fluid (Figure 2a and b).

Habitat
Very rare (on the basis of distribution), growing singly near the agricultural land along road side.

Specimens examined
Kangri, Dhamrol, 1145 m amsl, growing near the agricultural land along road side.

Economic importance
It is classified as a multipurpose tree, and is lopped for fodder and fuel wood, and is a suitable species for soil conservation and reclamation of degraded sites.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Location map of the study area.