Aadil Farooq Shah and Kumarasamy D.
Abstract
Man has been using the vegetation as a source of food, fodder, drugs and many other necessities of existence from ancient times. Even these days the primitive tribal societies rely only on the plant existence in their surroundings. Though, there had been investigations of the match for human consumption, monetary values of the higher plants, especially the ferns and angiosperms had been unfortunately ignored. The ferns were used in Homeopathic, Ayurvedic, and Unani pills and offered food, insecticides and ornamentation. The present investigation is about the uses of ferns as food, fodder and ethno-medicine. So, a deep view about some fern species of Tamil Nadu hills had been taken underneath consideration for economic, and monetary elevation of the area.