Contributors to FOI

The two of us started out as just laypersons, interested in flowers. So, identifying every flower we saw, was a daunting task. And seeing flowers in all parts of India was a more difficult one. Over time, Flowers of India has grown into a community effort, with lots of people contributing in various ways. We can safely quote Urdu poet Sahir Ludhianvi to describe the Flowers of India effort:

मैं अकेला ही चला था जानिबे मंज़िल मगर, लोग साथ आते गये और कारवां बनता गया ॥
(I started all alone towards the goal/(but) people kept joining and it slowly turned into a caravan)

The Flowers of India site has now grown considerably since its birth in 2005, and so has the number of people associated with the site. Now the Flowers of India community is indeed a caravan of flower-crazy people. It involves many independent footloose flower-hunters, who travel to various parts of the country and capture the local flora in their cameras, which eventually gets added to the site. These flower-hunters come from various walks of life. They are enthusiastic trekkers who dare to go where few have ventured before. They are family-walas who turn their hill-station vacation into flower-hunting trips. They are houswives who get their taxis stopped in middle of nowhere because they spotted a flower on the roadside. They are students whose thirst for new things and adventure is never-quenching.

There are lots of people who regularly watch the site for unidentified flowers and keep sending their feedback. Their contribution is enormous, since identifying every wildflower that we come across is certainly no easy job.

Listed below are the major contributors to the site:
Prashant Awale:
Prashant is an engineer by profession and developed watching wild flowers as a hobby. He has been extensively trekking the sahyadri ranges. He has become an active contributor to the site by frequently sending us his beautifully photographed wild-flowers. He often hunts out very rare flowers.

Dinesh Valke:
Dinesh is an enthusiastic amatuer photographer and nature lover. He has been going after the flora with an admirable determination. He regularly watches the site and contributes new flower pictures and identifications. He is simply amazing at hunting out regional names of flowers and putting them in native scripts.

Pravin Kawale:
Pravin is an enthusiastic nature lover and a talented photographer. He has an NGO, Nisargmitra Alibag, which works for nature conservation. He regularly sends us pictures of wildflowers of the Western Ghats. His pictures are beautifully taken, and already identified when they reach us.

Radhika Vatsan:
Radhika, a theoretical physicist at BITS, Goa, has been involved in identifying flowers on the site right from the time the site was born. She has also contributed many flower photographs to the site and is the main person behind providing Tamil names and putting them in Tamil script. She wrote the section on Flowers in Ancient Literature.

Navendu Pagé:
Navendu Pagé (pronounced paagay) is student of botany in Bangalore. His skill in his field can be guaged from the fact that he identified flowers lying in our unidentified list, 15 at first go, 21 at second go and 6 at third go! He made a trip to Sikkim and took a large number of really nice photographs of Himalayan flowers, and contributed them here.

R.K. Nimai Singh:
It was a stroke of luck for us that Dr. Nimai Singh discovered our site. He is an Admistrative Services officer, but has a long-standing interest in plants. He has introduced many new plants in Manipur. His knowledge of plants is enviable and he has been generous in sharing it by identifying plants which were especially difficult for us.

Anu Venugopalan:
A faculty member at the Indra-Prastha University, Delhi, and a physicist by profession, Anu showed keen interest in the site and helped in identifying many flowers. She was also responsible for getting us in touch with Rita Singh.

 Gurcharan Singh:
Dr. Gurcharan is one of the few botanists involved with the site. He is prolific in his field and has done detailed study of the flora of Jammu and Kashmir. He has just retired from Khalsa College in Delhi, and devotes his full time capturing and identifying flora. He frequently sends us flower pictures and identifications and corrections, which are done with professional acumen. He is a boon to the site.

J. M. Garg:
J.M. Garg is a passionate naturalist and wildlife photographer. He is the creater of the Google group Indiantreepix which has become a haven plant lovers trying to identify their plants. Indiantreepix is probably the most happening of all the Google groups. J.M. Garg has become a major contributor to the FOI site. He also keeps sending corrections on the status of accepted names and synonyms, thus helping the site to carry state-of-the-art information.

Pankaj Kumar:
Dr. Pankaj Kumar, who recently completed his Ph.D., is our orchids expert. He has contributed lots of pictures of orchids and other himalayan flowers. He has also identified numerous orchid pictures on the site. He keeps a special watch on the orchids section.

Thingnam Sophia:
Sophia is a very keen flower enthusiast from Manipur. She has been taking pains to photograph flowers from Manipur, and sending them to us despite lack of good facilities. She has sent us lots of flowers specific to Manipur.

Nongthombam Ulysses:
Ulysses started out as an interested observer, but has slowly grown into an active participant. He has identified many flowers, contributed many flower pictures, and has been part of our unorganised flower-hunting trips.

Shaista Ahmad:
An overenthusiastic student, doing her Ph.D. in physics. She helped us identify lots of flowers, and is a keen flower-hunter too. She decided to become the self-styled PRO of the site and has done wonders in making the site known to flower lovers and botanists.

Rita Singh:
A faculty member at the Indra-Prastha University, Delhi, Rita Singh is a botanist by profession. She identified numerous flowers on this site. Takes keen interest in the site, and makes it a point to tell her students about the site, year after year. She is an experts in cycads.

Some of the others who have been contributing in various ways, are:

Gifts/donations to Flowers of India team:

  1. Geeta Rane from Mumbai gifted the book
    Flowers of Sahyadri by S. Ingalhalikar
  2. Keith Holmes from Australia, gifted the book
    Field Guide to Australian Wildflowers by D. Greig Adam Stainton.
  3. Pradip Krishen gifted the book
    Trees of Lodhi Garden by Pradip Krishen.

Tabish
Thingnam Girija