Paper Title
Morphological Phylogenetics of Selected Tree Species of Family Meliaceae of Uttrakhand

Abstract
Meliaceae is also known as Mahogany family. It is a huge family containing 49–50 genera and 620 species, spread in pan-tropical area escalating to temperate zone. Regarding the total number of genera and species in the Meliaceae family, varied estimations are known. There are 51 genera, 700 species in world, 23 genera 97 species are reported from India and 6 genera 9 species in Uttarakhand. The family comprises of trees are with sweet-smelling bark. Leaves spirally arranged, odd-pinnate, leaf bases swollen and elongated. Flower buds longer than broad, petals much longer than sepals. Various members of the family are extensively used for timber, fruits, shade and medicinal values. A large number of biologically active compounds have also been identified from family Meliaceae. Due to high demand for its various products, family is highly exploited hence; its natural stands are being exhausted. Family belongs to class Dicotyledons, subclass polypetalae and series Disciflorae. Bentham and Hooker kept it under order Geraniales along with Rutaceae, Germinaceae, Linaceae etc, however, Lyman and Benson placed Meliaceae and Rutaceaeas a discrete order Rutales which they placed between Geraniales and Sapindales. Likewise, various authors have kept Meliaceae under different orders. It has also been observed that position of certain families and species within family show a discrepancy in different classifications. In phylogenic study, sole morphological characters can lead to ambiguity in construction of a family. Moreover, huge variations in the morphological characters exist in family. The family was even revised by the Botanical Survey of India (BSI) in 1997 which was again based on the morphological features of the species which provide confusing information for phylogenic construction of family. The primary objective of this study was to describe the discrepancies observed in the phylogeny based on morphology. For this selected tree species of family Meliaceae were taken into account. All members of the family grouped together based on the taxonomic characters and belonged to the same genus fall in same cluster based on morphological and floral characters. Twenty-three consistent morphological and floral characters collectively were used to form morphological phylogeny using NTSYS-pc. The dendrogram obtained from the numerically represented morphological characters could not be able to separate the family primarily as in taxonomy but also produced a confusing picture as it was based on morphological characters and morphological characters may manifest of the interaction between the environment and the genotype and can change by climatic and edaphic factors. Due to which the dendrogram obtained for morphological data was not much helpful for alienation of species for the family. Morphological method for simple and accurate authentication of species is indispensible and some limitations in traditional taxonomy prevent this technique from meeting the complicated demands of species recognition. So, the molecular approach for the identification of plant species seems to be more effective. Thus, the main aim of the classification of plants should be based on phylogenetic relationship. Therefore, the study suggests for molecular identification, relationships and evolutionary divergence which is an advanced tool, due to the same reason presently almost all evolutionary relationships are inferred from molecular sequence data.