Since Zoroastrianism holds any form of life — animal or plant — in high esteem, the massacre of thousands of trees for the construction of a Metro car shed at Aarey Colony in Bombay has given rise to the question: What is a forest? The common man’s conception of a forest is a group of trees standing fairly close to each other and covering a fairly large area. A plantation would involve only a species or two, whereas a natural forest would have a good diversity of indigenous species.
Flora means the list of species occurring in a given area, while......