The below mentioned article provides a quick notes on Useful Plants in India.
The animals as well as man depend much upon plants for the sustenance of their lives. Many animals, birds and insects are herbivores and the plants provide them shelter. The mankind use plants as food, medicine and fuel, as materials for constructing their houses, for manufacturing their clothing’s, furniture and articles of luxury and as fodder for their cattle.
Plants with beautiful flowers and foliage please them and they use them to decorate their abode. The plants also provide them with weapons, and plants which are poisonous are made use of in killing or repelling insects that are injurious to their health and destroy or damage household articles.
There are plants which are sand-binders, and prevent land-erosion. Plants in general attract rain-clouds, retain moisture of the soil and atmosphere and prevent lands from turning into deserts, thus serving the mankind indirectly.
Plants which are directly useful to human being fall in the following categories:
(i) Plants supplying food.
(ii) Medicinal plants.
(iii) Fibre-plants.
(iv) Plants for paper-pulp.
(v) Timber plants, bamboos and canes.
(vi) Beverages, masticatory and narcotics.
(vii) Rubber yielding plants and plants yielding gum, dye and resin.
(viii) Insecticides.
(ix) Spices.
Those which are indirectly useful are also of no less importance and these are fodder plants, sand binders, plants for erosion control and ornamental plants. India is a large country with varied conditions of soil and climate.
The vegetation of India therefore is varied and plants of economic importance of almost all categories have their representatives in this country in the plains as well as in the hills, in deserts and in marshy areas and inundated fields.
These useful plants are mostly indigenous to this country, while a good number are exotics. The exotics have all been introduced through human agencies, some quite recently and some in the remote past.
Among the introduced plants are Cinchona, Ipecac, Digitalis, Eucalyptus, Maize, Potato, Tomato, French bean, Soya bean, Cabbage, Cauliflower, Sweet potato, Custard apple, Papaw, Guava, Pine apple, Tobacco, Coffee, Chilies, Sisalhemp, Cashewnut, Casava (or Tapioca), Zapota, etc.
Mahogany tree was introduced to enrich our timber resources but in this country the trees do not produce timber of the same quality as obtained from trees grown in West Indies.
Many trees have been introduced as avenue-trees and ornamental trees in parks and gardens, e.g. Peltophorum inerme (Roxb) Llanos, Acacia moniliformis Griseb, Delonix regia Raf., Samanea saman Merrill, Grevillea robusta A. Cunn., Spathodea campanulata Beauv., different species of Eucalyptus, etc. Bougainvillaea is very popular all over India, and this has come from Brazil.