Invited talk of Dr Vartika on Town planning plants of Indian Puranas in present context

Udaipur . An International webinar series on 'various dimensions of Indian Knowledge Tradition' is organized by Govt. M. S. Golwalkar College, Rewa, Madhya Pradesh from 12th to 16th June 2024. Notably, Dr. Vartika Jain, Assistant Professor at Dept. of Botany, Govt. Meera Girls College, Udaipur (Rajasthan) was invited to talk on the theme of the webinar.  Dr. Vartika delivered a talk on Some town planning plants of Indian Puranas in present context on Thursday, 13th June, 2024, the second day of webinar. She described different plants mentioned for town planning purposes along with their currently accepted botanical nomenclature specifically from Brahmavaivarta Purana and Matsya Purana. In Matsya Purana, there are 49 plants mentioned for plantation in towns and some of the plants are common to the plants as recommended in Brahmavaivarta Purana. She assessed the present status of the plantation of the puranic plants and provided the list of the indigenous plants of Puranas which need attention to be planted in town areas. Some of those plants were Banyan Tree, Peepal, Semal (Silk Cotton Tree), Jackfruit, Seeta-asoca, Bael, Varun, Arjun, Mahua, Kanak-champa, Haritaki etc. Dr Vartika discussed the increasing problem of invasive plant species such as Eucalyptus, Prosopis juliflora, Black wattle, Yellow kaner etc. and its impact on local ecosystem and told that we should go back to our ancient Indian knowledge traditions as mentioned in Puranas and plant those indigenous species which are congenial for fauna of our country.
In the beginning, Prof. R.L.S. Sikarwar from AKS University, Satna, chairperson of the session introduced Dr. Vartika to the audience. Delegates from Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand, USA have also joined the webinar. Dr. Ravishankar Thupalli, Prof. Karabi Mitra, Dr. A.G. Pandurangan and many other stalwarts of Botany and other fields appreciated the presentation of Dr Vartika and advised her to provide the list of priority plants to local bodies before plantation drive starts in monsoons. The Webinar was held on Google Meet Platform. In the end, convener of the International webinar Prof. Skand Mishra from Govt. M. S. Golwalkar College, Rewa extended her heartfelt thanks to Dr. Vartika for depicting the ecological importance of Puranic plants.