Walk into any bookstore and you’ll find alphabet charts filled with giraffes, penguins, and macaws. But what about the creatures that are around us? This chart brings together the plants and animals of Tamil Nadu, from dugongs to Indrella snails, fungi, odonates, wasps, wildflowers all through the Tamil alphabet.

As the name suggests this chart will have all flora and fauna seen in Tamil Nadu with their Tamil names. This chart is produced mainly to introduce the biodiversity of Tamil Nadu through the Tamil alphabets for the kids, teachers and nature educators. The flora and fauna presented here are carefully chosen so that:

(i) it covers organisms from all the landscapes of Tamil Nadu. For instance Dugong, Sea shell, Sardine are from marine ecosystems, Indrella snail, Strobilanthus are from the forests and wasp, spiders, skink are from plains and urban settings,

(ii) organisms are not the so called iconic or charismatic but lesser known organisms such as stingray, butterflies and odonates,

(iii) and not just from one or two groups of organisms but cover most of the taxa such as fungi, plants, invertebrates, reptiles, birds and mammals.

This resource is created in collaboration with Nature Classrooms and illustrated and designed by Karunya Baskar.

Download the poster from here.

Read more about the journey of this resource here.

This resource is open source and free to use for educational purposes. Illustrations used in this chart are contributed to the Wikimedia Commons.  https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Illustrations_by_Karunya_Baskar

Authors: P Jeganathan, Aditi Rao and Vena Kapoor