Nineteenth Notulae Update Reshapes Map of Italy’s Native Vascular Flora

Italy’s botanical map has just been redrawn in a series of small but consequential strokes. The nineteenth installment of the Notulae to the Italian native vascular flora, published in Italian Botanist, presents new records, confirmations and exclusions for native taxa in ten genera: Carex, Filago, Koeleria, Lonicera, Myosotis, Phleum, Potamogeton, Staehelina, Verbascum and Zannichellia. Each entry is a technical floristic datum, yet together they trace a portrait of a flora still full of surprises, from alpine crests in the Ligurian Alps to a river in Molise carrying a taxonomically contested aquatic plant.

The series works on a simple premise: the distribution of a species is only as reliable as its most recent verifiable record. Contributors submit short texts of no more than 1,000 characters, always accompanied by a herbarium specimen or its scan, which is deposited in the FI Herbarium, the Sezione di Botanica Filippo Parlatore of the Natural History Museum in Florence. This specimen-based discipline is what separates a genuine range extension from a bibliographic echo. The new installment applies that discipline with particular rigor to two honeysuckles, Lonicera xylosteum and Lonicera periclymenum, both of which are now excluded from the flora of Campania after centuries of accumulated error.

The case of Lonicera xylosteum is a textbook example of how a misreading can calcify into orthodoxy. Michele Tenore reported the species in 1813 for the Matese massif, which straddles the Campania border, but by 1831 he had restricted it to the Central Apennines around Mount Corno in Abruzzo. Later authors, however, kept the Campanian record alive. Pignatti’s influential 1982 flora presumably drew on Fiori, who had converted the older indication Terra di Lavoro into Campania, an indication that itself traced back to Terracciano’s nineteenth-century citations referring to localities that today lie in southern Lazio. The most recent record for the province of Benevento has also proven erroneous on direct observation. The paper trail, followed carefully, dissolves entirely.

Lonicera periclymenum met a similar fate, and the forensic detail is even finer. Tenore had described L. periclymenum var. villosa from the mountains of Irpinia, and national floras repeated the record for the province of Avellino for well over a century. The only pertinent specimen in the Naples herbarium, however, bears no original label, only a later annotation by Lorenzo Grande, who indicated Tenore as the collector, added a question mark over the Hirpinian mountains, and observed that the leaves do not agree with Tenore’s own description. Grande’s doubt, written on the sheet, was enough to break the chain of evidence. With no specimen that can be linked to the original record, and with Tenore’s earlier generic citation for the Kingdom of Naples reflecting a region where the species does not occur naturally, the Campanian population of this western European honeysuckle is struck from the regional flora.

On the positive side of the ledger, the installment adds genuinely new regional records. Carex leersii, a sedge easily overlooked or confused with the closely related Carex divulsa, is recorded for the first time in Abruzzo from a roadside scarp near the Convento di San Colombo in Barisciano, at 1,100 meters. The species was already known in the Apennines from Calabria, Campania, Lazio and Marche, and the authors consider it plausible that it occurs in neighboring regions as well, simply unnoticed. Myosotis pusilla, a tiny forget-me-not, is new for Calabria, where many individuals were observed growing in rock formations near a pine plantation at Motta San Giovanni in the province of Reggio Calabria. The species shares its habitat with two related borages but grows exclusively close to the rocks, a niche partitioning that the observers documented in detail.

Two alpine and aquatic records carry particular technical weight. Koeleria cenisia, a grass endemic to the Western Alps, is confirmed for Liguria between Monte Frontè and Passo di Garlenda in the commune of Mendatica, at 2,027 meters on a calcareous rocky crest, where it grows abundantly in grasslands dominated by Hieracium tomentosum and Helictotrichon sempervirens. The species ranges from the Pennine to the Ligurian Alps, and the new confirmation closes a gap in its known Italian distribution. Equally notable is Zannichellia peltata, an aquatic plant of the Biferno river in Molise, new for that region. The species is considered taxonomically doubtful in the most recent national checklist, but the authors attribute that doubt to past taxonomic misunderstandings, arguing that it is well differentiated from Zannichellia palustris and other members of the group. Intriguingly, in Molise it was observed in weakly flowing water rather than the standing or lentic situations more typical of the genus, with samples collected in paucispecific communities dominated by the species at depths of 10 to 15 centimeters.

The record of Staehelina dubia in Veneto is perhaps the most dramatic of the new entries. This western Mediterranean composite of the Asteraceae was found in Val Sassè near Costermano in the province of Verona, where at least a hundred specimens of different ages, including seedlings, occupy roughly 200 square meters of a dry, stony, semi-wooded slope on maiolica substrate. The presence of seedlings suggests a self-sustaining population, and the authors consider an artificial introduction unlikely because the site lies in a poorly disturbed area. The closest known occurrences are probably in the Reggiano area of Emilia, making the Venetian population a significant jump in the species’ known range. There is a bittersweet note: some plants have already been destroyed by the recent construction of a downhill ski slope, a reminder that even newly discovered populations are not safe from development.

The installment also documents regional alien taxa, and here the story turns to campsites. Filago congesta, a Mediterranean annual resembling Filago pyramidata but distinguishable by its prostrate habit and the absent or fragile bristles of the central flowers’ pappus, is new as a naturalized regional alien for both Trentino-Alto Adige and Veneto. Systematic explorations of campsites along Lake Garda since 2006 identified the first specimens, and subsequent collections show the progressive expansion of the species in campsites where it had already been found and its establishment in others. The pattern mirrors observations from the Netherlands and Belgium, where the species has colonized several campsites, confirming a marked ability to expand in this peculiar habitat. The tourist economy of Lake Garda, it seems, has created a corridor for Mediterranean ruderal species moving north.

Phleum exaratum, an eastern Steno-Mediterranean annual grass, tells a similar story on dry land. New as a naturalized regional alien for Veneto, it was found near Vallese in the commune of Oppeano on sandy uncultivated ground beside a road. The population is extensive: the species was recorded frequently on sandy soil up to 400 meters northeast of the original point and up to 1,400 meters east, covering an area of at least 20 hectares where it colonizes roadside verges, uncultivated land, a wheat field and a dry meadow. Originally reported in Italy from southern Apulia and Basilicata, with various casual occurrences known in central Europe, the species appears to be consolidating a foothold in the Po plain, raising the technical question of how long a naturalized regional alien remains regional before its status is reassessed nationally.

Beyond the individual records, the installment includes Verbascum thapsus subsp. montanum as new for Abruzzo, found at Le Piane near Campo di Giove at 1,148 meters, closing a historical gap: the subspecies had been reported in the past for the National Park of Abruzzo, Lazio and Molise, but only from the Lazio side of the border. The contribution also provides nomenclatural and distribution updates and corrigenda to the most recent national checklist, drawing on dozens of recent publications and supplied as supplementary material. The series, coordinated by Lorenzo Lastrucci and Fabrizio Bartolucci, continues to accept contributions, and the nineteenth installment demonstrates why the format endures: by anchoring every claim to a specimen, it converts scattered observations into a cumulative, verifiable record of a flora in motion. In an era of climate change and habitat transformation, that record is the baseline against which every future change will be measured.

Subject of Research: New floristic notulae update distribution records, confirmations and exclusions for Italy's native vascular flora across ten genera.

Article Title: Notulae to the Italian native vascular flora: 19

Article References: Bartolucci, F., Domina, G., Bertolli, A., Boni, R., Galasso, G., Caporusso, C., Del Guacchio, E., Laface, V. L. A., Forte, L., Lonati, M., Menini, F., Mezza, I., Napolitano, F., Nota, G., Pallanza, M., Pazienza, G., Pellegrino, G., Prosser, F., Santangelo, A., … Lastrucci, L. (2025). Notulae to the Italian native vascular flora: 19. Italian Botanist, 19, 143-154. https://doi.org/10.3897/italianbotanist.19.159733

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/italianbotanist.19.159733

Keywords: Notulae, Italian, native, vascular, flora, scientific research