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756 BOOK REVIEWS
Perhaps Corner’s greatest contributions were in
raising concerns about the rapid loss of tropical
forests in South-East Asia and elsewhere. He led
two major Royal Society sponsored explorations of
Gunung Kinabalu in Sabah that were instrumental in
having it established as a National Park. His sugges-
tion that Kinabalu is one of the richest mountains in
the world has subsequently been fully confirmed. I
have followed in his footsteps on Kinabalu and also in
the Solomon Islands where he led another Royal
Society expedition that confirmed their biogeographi-
cal importance. Corner wrote to a colleague in 1971:
‘We . . . shall have seen things which will soon be gone
forever’. How right he was!
Reading this book has encouraged me to return to
Corner’s classic books: The Wayside Trees of Malaya
(Corner, 1988), The Life of Plants (Corner, 1964) and
The Natural History of Palms (Corner, 1966). Corner
had an imaginative and original mind that still
inspires me. His life and achievements are justifiably
celebrated here in this warts and all account that has
brought his son an appreciation of his father whilst
still leaving many questions about his parents’ rela-
tionship unresolved. I cannot help feeling that there
remains another story, as yet untold, to be written
about this intriguing and enigmatic man – a botanical
genius but a flawed human being.
PHILLIP CRIBB
REFERENCES
Corner EJH. 1964. The Life of Plants. London: Weidenfeld
and Nicholson.
Corner EJH. 1966. The natural history of palms. London:
Weidenfeld and Nicholson.
Corner EJH. 1981. The Marquis: a tale of Syanon-to. Singa-
pore: Heinemann Eductaional Books (Asia).
Corner EJH. 1988. Wayside trees of Malaya in two volumes,
third edition. Malayan Nature Society.
Flowering Plants of the Western Ghats, India, by T.S.
Nayar, A. Rasiya Beegam and M. Sibi, 2014. Jawa-
harlal Nehru Tropical Botanic Garden and Research
Institute, Palode, Thiruvananthapuram 695562,
2 Volumes (Vol. 1 Dicots: Acanthaceae to Zygophyl-
laceae, i-x + 934 pages, ISBN 978-81-920098-2-7; Vol.
2 Monocots: Agavaceae to Zingiberaceae including
additions and species of doubtful occurence, i-vi + 935
-1683 pages, ISBN 978-81-920098-3-4; Set ISBN 978-
81-920098-9-6), HB, Price: Rs 3,500/-; US $ 200.00
The Western Ghats of India are a series of mountain
ranges extending for more than 16,000 km2 on the
western coast of peninsular India, harbouring one of
© 2015 The Linnean Society of London, Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society, 2015, 179, 755–757
the finest tropical forests in the world. These are one of
the world’s eight “hottest” biodiversity hotspots along
with Sri Lanka (Myers et al. 2000), and a world
heritage site. At least 325 globally threatened plant
species occur there. The Western Ghats cover five
different states of India: Goa, Karnataka, Kerala,
Maharashtra and Tamilnadu. Floristic works are gen-
erally delimited by political boundaries but this work
has broadly covered the flowering plants of the
Western Ghats for the first time. In his foreword, the
eminent agricultural scientist M.S. Swaminathan
describes the book as a valuable guide to all interested
in the flora of the unique ecosystem of the Western
Ghats.
The authors have covered 23,000 scientific names,
13,000 local names and about 3,000 references. The
two volumes document the occurrence of a total of
8,080 taxa including 7,402 species, 117 subspecies and
476 varieties of flowering plants in the region. 376 are
exotics naturalised, 1,438 species are cultivated or
planted as ornamentals. 66 species, 5 subspecies and
14 varieties are treated as doubtful occurrence. Of the
5,588 indigenous species, 2,253 species are endemic to
India and of the 2,253 Indian endemics 1,273 species
are exclusively confined to the Western Ghats. Dr
M.K.Janarthanam (2014) from Goa University, India
has pointed out that the present work in an extension
of earlier publication by these authors (Nayar et al.
2006) which is similar in its style and format.
The book has many positive points such as the user
guide. Accepted names are listed with references,
synonyms, nature of habit and economic uses. The
economic uses include all reported medicinal uses but
ethnomedicinal uses have not been considered. Distri-
bution of species is documented at not only the state
level but also global level. IUCN threat categories and
local names of the plants are in six languages: Guja-
rati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi and Tamil.
It would have been nice if Sanskrit names were
included as well. Phenology information is useful to aid
plant collecting field trips.
23,000 scientific names and about 3,000 references
are a huge task but the lack of colour photographs,
detailed nomenclature, descriptions, keys and illustra-
tions is a disappointment to the users of these books.
Latest broadly accepted family treatments are not
followed. Even though the APG III (Angiosperm
Phylogeny Group III, 2009) system of classification is
not yet followed in India, it would be nice to keep up
with the latest accepted treatments in taxonomy and
the authors could have given thought to this. Rather
than providing two separate indexes to scientific
names and the common names of the plants, a com-
bined index listing scientific names, local names and
families along with the page numbers would have
helped the users to understand the order of arrange-

ment and make it easier to quickly navigate the books.
A glossary would have been useful as well. Authors
may wish to incorporate these in their future editions.
This book is indeed a good information source listing
plant names of Western Ghats as it provides correct
names, synonyms, references, economic uses, nature of
habit, phenology, distribution and status of species.
Rather than hunting through many different publica-
tions for Western Ghats, I would now consult this book.
The dream reference bringing together information on
all the plants of the Western Ghats is finally here!
RANEE OM PRAKASH
© 2015 The Linnean Society of London, Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society, 2015, 179, 755–757
BOOK REVIEWS 757
REFERENCES
Angiosperm Phylogeny Group III. 2009. An update of the
Angiosperm Phylogeny Group classification for the orders
and families of flowering plants: APG III, Botanical Journal
of the Linnean Society 161: 105–121.
Janarthanam MK. 2014. Flowering Plant of the Western
Ghats, India. Rheedea 24 (2): 134–135.
Myers N, Mittermeier RA, Mittermeier CG, Da Fonseca
GAB, Kent J. 2000. Biodiversity Hotspots for Conservation
Priorities. Nature 403: 853–858
Nayar TS, Rasiya Beegam A, Mohanan N, Rajkumar G.
2006. Flowering plants of Kerala. A handbook. Thiruvanan-
thapuram: Tropical Botanic Garden and Research Institute.