Course Contents

1. Introduction: Importance and relationship with other sciences, Phases of plant taxonomy. Origin and radiation of angiosperm, their probable ancestors, when, where and how did the angiosperms evolve; the earliest fossil records of angiosperms. 2. Concept of Species : What is a species? Taxonomic species, Biological species, Micro and macro species. 3. Variation : Types of variation, Continuous and discontinuous variation, Clinal variation 4. Systematics and Genecology / Biosystematics: Introduction and importance, Methodology of conducting biosystematics studies, Various biosystematics categories such as ecophene, ecotype, ecospecies, coenospecies and comparium. 6. Taxonomic Evidence: Importance and types of taxonomic evidences: anatomical, cytological, chemical, molecular, palynological, geographical and embryological. 7. Nomenclature : Important rules of botanical nomenclature including effective and valid publication, typification, principles of priority and its limitations, author citation, rank of main taxonomic categories, conditions for rejecting names. 8. Classification: Why classification is necessary? Importance of predictive value. Brief history, Different systems of classification with at least one example of each (Linnaeus, Bentham and Hooker, Engler and Prantl, Takhtajan and Dahlgren. 9. Brief introduction of Numerical taxonomy. 10. General characteristics, distribution, evolutionary trends, phyletic relationships and economic importance of the following families of angiosperm: 1. Apiaceae(Umbelliferae) 2. Arecaceae(Palmae) 3. Asclepiadaceae 4. Asteraceae(Compositae) 5. Brassicaceae (Cruciferae) 6. Cannaceae 7. Caryophyllaceae 8. Chenopodiaceae 9. Convolvulaceae 10. Cucurbitaceae 11. Euphorbiaceae 12. Fabaceae (Leguminosae) 13. Lamiaceae (Labiatae) 14. Liliaceae 15. Malvaceae 16. Papaveraceae 17. Poaceae (Graminae) 18. Ranunculaceae 19. Rosaceae 20. Scrophulariaceae 21. Solanaceae Practicals 1. Technical description of plants of the local flora and their identification up to species level with the help of a regional/Flora of Pakistan 2. Preparation of indented and bracketed types of keys 3. Preparation of permanent slides of pollen grains by acetolysis method and study of different pollen characters. 4. Study of variation pattern in different taxa. 5. Submission of properly mounted and fully identified hundred herbarium specimens at the time of examination 6. Field trips shall be undertaken to study and collect plants from different ecological zones of Pakistan.