Kodagu is one of the greenest landscapes in India and is part of Western Ghats, with 81 per cent of the area undertree cover and 8 per cent of India’ s plant wealth.  We assessed floristic diversity, richness and carbon stock of natural forestsand coffee agroforests of trees, shrubs and herbs using the data collected from 50 sample plots of 0.16 ha.  T otal of 62 specieswere recorded in coffee agroforests and 32 in natural forests. Shannon’ s diversity was highest in natural forests (2.70) whencompared to that of coffee agroforests (2.33). Simpson’ s dominance in natural forests recorded was 0.12 when comparedwith the value of agroforests (0.24). There was a similarity of 11.02 per cent in species composition between forests andcoffee agroforests. The most dominant species in coffee agroforests was Grevillea robustawith importance value index(IVI) of 72.17, 68.73 and 73.77 in small, medium and large farms, respectively.  The total amount of carbon stock betweenlandholdings in coffee agroforests recorded 42.04 ± 4.66, 61.02 ± 5.89 and 85.11 ± 8.11Mg ha–1 in small, medium and largeholding sizes, respectively, while in natural forests carbon stock of 74.75± 2.71Mg ha–1 was recorded. The present studydemonstrates that both forests and coffee agroforests stores considerable amounts of carbon stock. Furthermore, the studyalso revealed that landholding size of coffee plantations considerably influenced the floristic diversity and carbon stock.Sustainably managed small coffee forms offers best opportunity for conservation of biodiversity as well as for higheramount of carbon stock and thus, production systems play a vital role in climate change mitigation.Key words: Above-ground biomass, Carbon stock, Coffee agroforests, Floristic diversity , Western ghatsRESEARCH P APERIntroduction