Mosses of Nilgiri Hills ARCHIVE FOR BRYOLOGY 102 (2011) 1 Status of Mosses in Nilgiri Hills (Western Ghats), India Praveen Kumar Verma 1 , Afroz Alam 2 and S. C. Srivastava 3 1 Rain Forest Research Institute, Sotai Ali, Deovan, Post Box # 136, Jorhat -785001(Assam), India 2 Department of Biotechnology, Banasthali University, Banasthali Vidyapith, Rajasthan - 304022, India 3 National Botanical Research Institute, Rana Pratap Marg, Lucknow - 226 001 (Uttar Pradesh), India E-mail Corresponding Arthur: dr.pkverma2008@gmail.com Abstract: The present paper deals with the current status of mosses of Nilgiri hills. There is total of 157 taxa reported so far on the basis of all earlier records. In which 22 taxa new to Nilgiri hills. The socio-ecology of mosses of the Nilgiri hills is also discussed in the text. Key words: Tamil Nadu/Nilgiri hills/ Bryophyta/Moss/ Morpho-taxonomy Introduction The bryophytes, nonvascular cryptogams, a highly specialized group of plants with second highest assemblages among land plant often flowering plants. There surviving capacity is enormous as they survive under wide variety of environmental condition and forming strong part of the ecosystem where they grows in forest, wet lands, desert (hot as well as cold) and other habitats. They have extensive phenotypic plasticity. They classified under three diversified classes, are Hepaticae, Anthocerotae and Musci. Among bryophytes mosses are a highly evolved group of bryophytes with ca. 17,000 species falling in 3 subclass, 4 order, 89 families, and ca. 898 genera across the world (see Richerdson, 1981; Vitt, 1984). They attaining unique place between lower cryptogams and vascular cryptogams, as they possess filamentous protonema like lower cryptogams and conducting strand like higher (vascular) cryptogams. However these small plants though producing no colourful flowers and seemingly of no direct economic value to human, play a vital role ecologically they colonize the bare soil surface thus helping to stabilize the soil by protecting it from the erosive effect of wind or rain. Most mosses inhabit rock surface and together with lichen are the pioneers in the inhospitable environment. They also act as space fillers occupying niches which are unsuitable for other plants therefore constitute an important component of tropical rain forest ecosystem. The several numbers of mosses evolve their mode of growth through demanding environment condition like evolving special ecological, morphological and physiological