Research Article

Floristic Composition of Verges of Motorway (M-1) Peshawar to Charsadda, Pakistan during Winter Season

Syeda Farzana Bibi*, Lal Badshah and Siraj-ud-Din

Department of Botany, University of Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan

Received | April 26, 2016; Accepted | September 06, 2016; Published | December 05, 2016

Correspondence | Syeda Farzana Bibi, Department of Botany, University of Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan; Email: sfarzanaonline@gmail.com

Citation | Bibi F.S., L. Badshah and Siraj-ud-Din. 2016. Floristic composition of verges of motorway (M-1) Peshawar to Charsadda, Pakistan during winter season. Sarhad Journal of Agriculture, 32(4): 405-416.

DOI | http://dx.doi.org/10.17582/journal.sja/2016/32.4.405.416

Keywords | Motorway verges, Floristic composition, Indigenous flora, Roadside vegetation, Invasive species

Introduction

Roads are constructed to join two different areas to facilitate the purpose of transport and trade. Therefore, for the social and economic development of any country it is very important to maintain the roads properly (Dierkes and Geiger, 1999). Motorway (M-1) was constructed in the year 2007 to connect the two provinces i.e. Punjab and Khyber PukhtunKhwa. Its total length is 155 km including 88 km in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and 67 km in the Province of Punjab. M-1 has 9 interchanges at Fatehjang, Bhatar, Burhan, Chachh, Rashaki, Swabi, Charsadda, Northern Bypass and Ring road on N-5.

Roads are useful as linear corridors, they provide habitats to flora and fauna and act as barriers to their dispersal (Angold, 1997). Many species of organisms are supported by road verges. In Pakistan NHA has taken steps to grow many species of trees along the major roads like motorway, it resulted in the reduction of conservation values of the habitats (Ahmad and Akbar, 2004). Some useful studies of roadside flora on national level have been carried out by Hansen and Jansen (1972) in Denmark.

Floristic diversity is a clear reflection of the vegetation resources, it is actually the total of the species located within an area. The present study aims to study flora along the verges of Motorway (M-1) from Peshawar to Charsadda in Pakistan. This research will provide baseline knowledge about the flora of the area under study and it will be helpful in future studies.

Material and Methods

The survey was completed during the winter season. During this period due to severe cold vegetation was not very frequent and diverse. Two visits were made at one month interval. Plants were collected from differ

Table 1: Floristic list, biological and leaf size spectrum of plants of Motorway (M-1)

ent sites at about one km distance. Plants were then dried and identified with the help of available literature and referred to their families. They were classified according to Raunkiar’s classification of life form and leaf size. Plants were related to their families and a floristic list of all plants was prepared. Plants were divided into different classes of leaf size and life form (Table 1). The collected data was further analysed in the result.

Results and Discussion

The soil of Motorway (M-1) roadsides is dry, sandy and having abundance of stones and gravel. After analyzing the plant data a comparison is made. This research consist of the floristic survey of road verges. In the present study flora along Motorway (M-1) from Peshawar to Charsadda Interchange in Pakistan was recorded. A total number of 30 species belonging to 17 families and 29 genera were collected from the area. The families include Poaceae (7 spp.), Amaranthaceae (2 spp.), Asteraceae (4 spp.) and Fabaceae (3 spp.) (Table 2). In Pakistan some surveys have been recorded about the composition of flora of the roadside (Akbar et al., 2003; Adnan and Rashid, 2001). A similar study was conducted by Ahmad (2007) in which wild medicinal plants were highlighted along road side verges of (M-2) Pakistan.

Table 2: Summary of flora of Motorway (M-1)

Ahmad (2007) worked on wild medicinal plants from Lahore to Islamabad Motorway (M-2). During his research he recorded a total of 81 plants belonging to 44 families known for their medicinal uses like fever, jaundice, dysentery, skin diseases, snakebite etc. Ahmad (2010) worked on detrended correspondence analysis (DCA) of Vegetation along motorway (M-2) in Pakistan. Ahmad (2010) collected data from 397 quadrats. A total of 227 vascular plant species were collected which belonged to 75 families. Amongst them there were 60 trees, 38 shrubs and 129 herbs. Out of these 227 species, the frequency of 15 species was more than 9%. It was revealed that the dominating plants along roadsides in the area are Cynodon dactylon, Bothriochloa pertusa, Heteropogon contortus, Calotropis procera, Cenchrus ciliaris and Rhynchosia minima. Amongst these plants Cenchrus ciliaris, Heteropogon contortus, Calotropis procera and Cynodon dactylon cover around 35.90 % of the area sampled. The floristic composition and ecological characteristics of Tank District were studied by Badshah et al. (2013). During this survey 205 species were collected from the area which belonged to 56 families. Amongst the different species the leading families were Polygonaceae (7 spp.), Brassicaceae (9 spp.), Asteraceae (14 spp.), Boraginaceae (7 spp.), Papilionaceae (19 spp.), Poaceae (34 spp.), Chenopodiaceae (10 spp.) and Euphorbiaceae (8 spp.). Ahmad et al. (2013) worked on vegetation along Motorway (M-1), his study area comprised on 90 km, from Rawalpindi to Attock district in Pakistan. He recorded 45 species of plants belonging to 23 plant families and classified vegetation data using detrended correspondence analysis (DCA) and two way indicator species analysis (TWINSPAN) techniques. Heteropogon contortus, Cynodon dactylon, Carthamus oxycantha, Chrysopogan aucheri, Lepidium apetalum, Calotropis procera and Conyza canadensis dominated the area under study. Besides these, some other frequent species are Conyza bonariensis, Sorghum halepense, Cymbopogan jwarancusa, Medicago polymorpha, Prosopis cineraria, Avena sativa, Euphorbia helioscopia and Dalbergia sisso etc. Vegetation along coastal roads of Egypt has also been studied (Abd-el-Ghani and El-Sawaf, 2005). Plants along roadsides were also studied by Hansen and Jansen (1972).

Table 3: Life form spectra of plants of Motorway (M-1)

Life form gives information about the physiognomy of the vegetation (Badshah et al., 2013). Raunkiaer (1934) classification of life form is found to be more reliable. In Brazil phanerophytes and therophytes are generally the most common types of life forms (Costa et al., 2007). In this study, a comparison of life form spectra indicated that Threophytes are the most dominating plants which include members of Poaceae as the dominating community. The percentage of Hemicryptophyte is 20 which shows that they are the second most dominating community of Motorway (M-1) (Table 3). During present study family Poaceae was the dominating family with a total of 7 species including Brachiaria ramosa, Cenchrus ciliaris, Cynodon dactylon, Dactyloctenium aegyptium, Dichanthium annulatum, Eragrastis minor and Leptochloa panacea. The other families had less than 7 species. Ahmad (2010) found that out of 227 species 9.2 % belonged to Poaceae. Cynodon dactylon occurred in high degree because while growing it forms a complete cover on the ground (Ali et al., 2004). Heindl and Ullmann (1991) studied roadside vegetation in France, they found that Cynodon dactylon is highly adapted to mechanical impact, therefore it is able to suppress the growth of other plants, forming large monotypic stands. Cynodon dactylon was declared by Ali et al. (2004) and Heindl and Ullmann (1991) to be able of restraining the spread of other flora.

Badshah et al. (2013) studied flora of District Tank and found microphanerophytes with 12 (15.3%) species, nanophanerophytes 13 (16.6 %) species, hemicryptophytes 10 (12.8%) species, geophytes 8 (10.2%) species and chamaephytes 9 (11.5%) species during his research. He declared that therophytes with 25 (32.0%) species were most dominating life forms of the area. Shimwell (1971) and Cain and Castro (1959) reported that therophytes are the representatives of xerophytic climate. Another situation similar to present findings was revealed by Costa et al. (2007) revealed in Brazil where phanerophytes and therophytes are generally regarded as the most common life forms, which is a situation similar to the present findings. Sher and Khan (2007), Fazal et al. (2010) and Hussain et al. (2009), observed similar situation of hemicryptophytes and therophytes in arid and degraded environment. During studies of Batalha and Martins (2002) phanerophytes and hemicryptophyte were reported to be the dominant life forms in Brazil. Badshah et al. (2013) indicated that the most frequent leaf sizes in the flora of District Tank were mesophylls, leptophylls, nanophylls and microphylls. Malik et al. (2007) and Badshah et al. (2010) studied plants of Waziristan and Kotli Azad Kashmir and reported that microphylls were the dominant leaf size of the study area. Sher and Khan (2007) reported high percentage of leptophylls and nanophylls from Chagarzai area. In the present study leaf size spectra showed that the most abundant leaf size is Microphyll with a percentage of 50. Nanophylls and Mesophyll are 33.33 and 16.66, respectively (Table 4).

Table 4: Leaf size spectra of plants of Motorway (M-1)

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