Introduction

Nature worship was an integral part of most human societies since pre-historic era. Communities inhabiting in hilly and mountainous terrain have conserved a variety of ecosystems such as towering peaks, origins of rivers, rocky pinnacles, caves, patches of forests, etc. Arrival of organized religions led to faded away the nature worship in most parts of the world. The Indian highlands like the Himalayas, Western Ghats, Eastern Ghats, Central Indian hills, North-Eastern States etc. are major exceptions where natural sacred sites, though in diminished form persist to this day. These sacred areas known by various names like kans, devarabanas, devarakadus etc., associated with rich biodiversity, ecology and water resources, are local hotspots of biodiversity today.

Central Western Ghats known for its numerous sacred forests and these forest patches are with climax evergreen forest relics. However, anthropogenic activities through centuries, sacred forests have often given away to secondary forests, savannas and other land uses. The kan forests, main sacred sites of pre-colonial village communities in the Uttara Kannada district of Karnataka State, part of the State reserve forests, continue to shelter rare elements of biodiversity. The Myristica swamps, confined to merely few remnant patches in the southern hills of the district, interestingly, have several threatened flowering trees like Syzygium travancoricum (Critically Endangered), Myristica magnifica and Dipterocarpus indicus (both Endangered), Gymnacranthera canarica (Vulnerable) and Semecarpus kathalekanensis (newly discovered). These swamps have the rare presence of the tree ferns Cyathea nilgirensis and C. gigantea. Elsewhere in the district too several pteridophytes congregate in the humid and shaded environments of sacred forests. This paper focuses on the rich pteridophytes flora in the forest habitats surrounding sacred rocks of Yana village in Kumta taluk.

The pteridophytes, which include, ferns and fern-allies, form a major part of the flora only next to the angiosperms in the biodiversity rich Indian subcontinent. They grow luxuriantly in the moist tropical and temperate forests and their occurrence in different ecogeographically threatened regions from sea level to the highest mountains are of much interest (Dixit, 2000). The Western Ghats is one of the major centers of pteridophytic diversity in India. Approximately 320 species of ferns and fern-allies have found their abode in the varied habitats of Western Ghats with their diversity increasing in the north-south direction, obviously due to the more number of rainy months and higher altitudes with cooler climate that the south has. The central Western Ghats encompassing Karnataka state harbors about 174 species of ferns and fern allies distributed in various habitats (Dudani et al . 2011).