270 ISSN: 2348-1900 Plant Science Today http://www.plantsciencetoday.online Research Article Checklist of family Poaceae in Lahaul and Spiti district (Cold Desert), Himachal Pradesh, India Ranjana Negi 1* Sobia Baig 1 , Anup Chandra 1 , Praveen Kumar Verma 1 , Harsh Bardhan Naithani 1 , Rakesh Verma 1 & Anoop Kumar 2 1 Systematic Botany Discipline, Botany Division, Forest Research Institute, Dehradun 248 006, Uttarakhand, India 2 Geo-informatics Center, Forest Informatics Division, Forest Research Institute, Dehradun 248 006, Uttarakhand, India Artic le history Rec eived: 02 February 2019 Accepted: 19 May 2019 Publishe d: 12 Ju ne 2019 Publisher Horizon e-Publishing Group *Correspondence Ranjana Negi ranjananegi.icfre@gmail.com Abstract The present study provides an overview of the diversity and distribution of grass species in Lahaul- Spiti district (cold desert) situated in the Trans-Himalayan region i.e. Himachal Pradesh, India. From the study area 141 taxa (138 species and 3 subspecies) belonging to 14 tribes were recorded. The largest tribe was Festuceae followed by Agrostideae having 48 and 20 species, respectively. Two species Poa koelzii and P. Lahaulensis are endemic to Lahaul- Spiti. Puccinellia kashmiriana is rare as per IUCN status. The present study on the grass floral wealth of Lahaul-Spiti provides an important baseline data on grasses for further quantitative and qualitative investigations like their nutritive values, crop improvement programmes and shall also help in the identification of priority conservation areas in the region. Keywords: Endemism, Lahaul-Spiti, Poaceae, Trans-Himalaya . Citation: Negi R, Baig S, Chandra A, Verma PK, Naithani HB, Verma R & Kumar A . Checklist of family Poaceae in Lahaul and Spiti district (Cold Desert), Himachal Pradesh, India. Plant Science Today 2019;6(2):270-274. https://doi.org/10.14719/pst.2019.6.2.500 Copyright: © Negi et al (2019). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ). Indexing: Plant Science Today is covered by Scopus,Web of Science, BIOSIS Previews, ESCI, CAS, AGRIS, CABI, Google Scholar, etc. Full list at http://www.plantsciencetoday.online Introduction The Trans-Himalayan region of India constitutes a Cold Desert biome with harsh climatic conditions of piercing hot summers to long freezing winters. The soil is not very fertile and prevailing climatic conditions allow very short growing seasons making it a bare landscape with minimal water resources comprises of glacier-fed streams. The area of their occurrence is Ladakh region of Jammu and Kashmir; Lahaul and Spiti, Pooh sub division of Kinnaur and Pangi (Chamba District) of Himachal Pradesh. The study area Lahaul and Spiti district can be divided into four valleys based on intersecting river system: Chandra Valley (Chandra River), Bhaga Valley (Bhaga River), Pattan Valley (Chandrabhaga River) and Spiti Valley (Spiti River). The fascinating flora of Lahaul- Spiti has attracted the attention of various researchers from time to time. William Moorcraft (1) made the pioneer attempt to collect plants from Lahaul -Spiti and neighboring provinces of Kangra and Kullu in 1821. G. Watt (2) and Aitchinson (3) were among the earlier plant explorers of the 19 th century. In the 20 th century notable collections were made by Joshi Horizon e-Publishing Group ISSN: 2348-1900 Plant Science Today (2019) 6(2): 270-274 https://doi.org/10.14719/pst.2019.6.2.500