General Information

Welcome to Auroville’s TDEF. This site has been designed to allow you to search for relevant information about some species of the Tropical Dry Evergreen Forest of South India and their distribution in the area around Auroville. The information included on this website has been drawn from field surveys undertaken by a team of botanists based in the International Township of Auroville. All of the woody and perennial species have been included as well as the annual climbers.


There are four main functions that this site performs

Information on TDEF
Get further information on the TDEF, about the ecology of the forest, the animals associated with it, other references to it.
Site Distribution
You can view information on the distribution of the location of remnants of the TDEF, and the distribution of individual species within these locations. Thank you to icons8.com for the icon used on the map.
Browse
You can search for information about each of the plant species that have been found in the remnant forest in the study area. If you know the botanical name of the plant or one of its common synonyms then all you will need to do is select and click on the species in the browse list and you will have access to photographs and relevant information about that species.
Local Names
It is possible to search through the local Tamil names and then access the information.
Search
With an unidentified specimen from the field you can utilize a multi access key to identify the plant.

Botanical Considerations

Herbarium accessions of all species included in the database are stored at the Auroville herbarium and are open to inspection by prior arrangement. The species were identified with: Flora of the Tamilnadu Carnatic, Matthew; Flora of the Palni Hills, Matthew; Flora of the Presidency of Madras, Gamble; Flora of Ceylon, Dassanayake et al. The main reference works used: Flora of Tamilnadu, Vol I, Nair & Henry; Vol II, III, Henry et al.; World Checklist of Seed Plants, Govaerts.

The distribution data of the following species should be treated with caution, as there was confusion with their identification that came to light after many surveys had been completed.

Not included in the database were:

Concept and design

Paul Blanchflower

Data management and images

Jaap den Hollander

Website Development

Luk Gastmans

Botanical Information

Walter Gastmans, N Balachandran

Social and Cultural information

Dr Logonathan

Other contributors

Gemma Hunneyball, Michael Mason, Rik Poot


European Union

Work supported and funded by European Commission under budget line B7-6200/TF/2001/0483
"Restoration of the Tropical Dry Evergreen Forest, Coromandel Coast, South India"