Eco-morphology of forest trees in and around the mahabaleshwar temple hill area in Maharashtra state, India

Mahabaleshwar is a small town in Satara district of Maharashtra (India) which is about 122 km south-west of Pune and 285 km from Mumbai. This region is the source of five rivers (panch ganga) - Krishna, Koyna, Venna, Gayatri and Savitri. Heavy rainfall has been of normal occurrence in this area during monsoons and the climate is suitable for the cultivation of strawberries. The trees in the forest area had branched, twisted and entangled stems near the ground and at some other places these conditions were more pronounced. On comparison, such morphology of trees has been found identical to the trees found in “Nidhivan”, Vridavan and was not similar to trees in any other eco-climatic zone. Further researches are required to have near reality explanation.