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Language: English
The plant genus Strobilanthes is mostly composed of shrubs and is native to the humid Indo-Malayan tropics. This group has very many fascinating special features: explosive speciation within a rather limited area i.e. the Western Ghats; extremely restricted geographical distribution of very many species; unusual life cycles of gregarious flowering after varying life spans without ever putting out a flower bud; after flowering, disappearance of the species from the entire locality; after the collective death reappearance after a short gap; choice of unusual microhabitats and associates. Beyond all these wondrous marvels there looms a dark void as we know very little about them. What different ecological interactions do these species of Strobilanthes have with the rest of the biota in their specialised habitat? The current volume on Strobilanthes is a well-illustrated foundation for this poorly known group. The book broadly sketches the geographical reach of the genus Strobilanthes in Peninsular India, especially its chosen evolutionary arena, the Western Ghats.
