The study examined a high wall of cavernous limestone above a cave approximately 150 m deep. The site is located at 44.1406°N, 10.1060°E and 481 m above sea level. The rock face reaches about 75 m in height, has a 90-degree slope and a southern exposure. It forms part of a larger karst system developed in the basal carbonic breccia of the Falda Toscana in the northern sector of the Apuan Alps.

Weather records from the nearby Equi Terme station for 2014–2023 indicate average annual temperatures between 4 and 22 °C and approximately 1,600 mm of annual rainfall, with the maximum in autumn and winter and the minimum in summer. The surrounding forest landscape includes old, nearly monophytic coppices of Ostrya carpinifolia and sparse chestnut groves of Castanea sativa, while Quercus ilex characterizes the walls and top of the rocky buttress.

Researchers conducted a field exploration in June 2024, photographing the site with a reflex camera equipped with a 200× telephoto lens. Dense deciduous foliage prevented the drone from taking off, so the aerial survey was conducted in autumn 2024. A DJI Mini 3 Pro quadcopter with a visible-spectrum RGB camera collected 15 nadir images and 10 front images from 10 m above the top and 10 m from the external wall face.

The manual flight proceeded at 1.5 m per second with 60% overlap and a ground sampling distance of 0.7 cm per pixel. The images were processed with Agisoft Metashape into a three-dimensional reconstruction and orthophoto. Researchers then established five 60 m² survey plots on the reconstructed model, each divided into 1 m by 1 m quadrats for percentage-cover measurements. Coverage data were compared using principal component analysis in PAST 4.03.

The plots extended from 510 to 556 m in altitude. Total plant cover ranged from 11.5% in the plot at 510 m to 54.7% in the highest plot at 556 m, with differences associated with rock morphology and slope. Sixteen of the 44 detected taxa occurred within the five drone-imaged plots; the remaining taxa were photographed or found outside the plots.

The detected flora was dominated numerically by arboreal, shrubby and chamaephytic life forms, while Mediterranean chorotypes were prevalent. No therophytes were identified in the drone footage of the limestone wall. The researchers attributed their apparent absence partly to the technical difficulty of recognizing very small plants and partly to difficulties in dispersal and establishment on rocky substrates. Five Italian endemics were recorded: Atadinus glaucophyllus, Globularia incanescens, Moltkia suffruticosa subsp. bigazziana, Salix crataegifolia and Siler montanum subsp. apuanum.

Holm oak, Quercus ilex, colonized the summit, ridge and ledges alongside hop-hornbeam, Arbutus unedo and Fraxinus ornus. On more strongly sloping parts of the wall, Atadinus glaucophyllus, Juniperus phoenicea and Moltkia suffruticosa subsp. bigazziana became prevalent. Common herbaceous taxa included Brachypodium genuense, Parietaria officinalis and Centranthus ruber. Inside the cave, investigators observed no vegetation other than a widespread algal covering on the walls.

The principal component analysis separated two vegetation types: ledge communities, mainly arboreal or shrubby and characterized by Quercus ilex, and rocky slope-wall communities, where smaller species occurred and Atadinus glaucophyllus was consistently present. The first two components accounted for 53.337% and 23.639% of the variance, respectively. Based on prevalent and typical species, the researchers associated parts of the site with habitat 9340, “Quercus ilex and Quercus rotundifolia forests,” under the 92/43/EEC Directive, and considered some relevés potentially associated with habitat 8210, “Calcareous rocky slopes with chasmophytic vegetation.”

The observations were bounded by the small number of surveys and the inability of the imaging method to identify all very small species reliably. Because samples could not be collected for definitive identification and some taxa fell below the method’s detection limit, the researchers said the communities could not be assigned to formal phytosociological syntaxa. They nevertheless interpreted the Mediterranean-dominated rock vegetation as extrazonal within the Apuan landscape and described the ledges as relict stations associated with post-glacial movements of holm oak into the mountain interior. The communities may preserve traces of the formerly natural vegetation around the caves, while advances in sensor technology were predicted to improve resolution and species-identification capabilities.

Subject of Research: UAV-based botanical survey of plant communities on the exterior walls of an Apuan limestone cave

Article Title: The ledge plant communities in a limestone cave of the Apuan area: identification and survey by UAV technology

Article References: Bertacchi, A., Orazi, D., & Ercolini, L. (2025). The ledge plant communities in a limestone cave of the Apuan area: identification and survey by UAV technology. Italian Botanist, 20, 9-22. https://doi.org/10.3897/italianbotanist.20.145009

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/italianbotanist.20.145009

Keywords: UAV botanical survey, Tecchia di Tenerano, Apuan Alps, limestone cave, cliff vegetation, plant species identification, Italian endemic plants, phytosociology, Mediterranean flora, ledge, plant, communities

The observation marks the species as new to the flora of Emilia-Romagna. In Piedmont, fully developed plants of Cytisus infestus subsp. infestus were located in mixed scrub below the Strada Provinciale 216 near Alto, Cuneo, at 730 metres. The vegetation there included Mediterranean species such as Osyris alba, and the finding records Cytisus infestus as new to Piemonte.

A cryptogenic species, Elatine hexandra, was reported for the first time in Sardinia. This holarctic plant, associated with temporarily flooded ground, occurs widely in western and northwestern Europe but becomes rare toward southern and eastern Europe. Italian records had previously treated it as cryptogenic in Piemonte, Lombardia, Veneto and Emilia-Romagna, while its established Mediterranean-island presence had been reported from Corsica.

The new Sardinian population was found around several semi-natural lakes formed after granite quarries were abandoned near Calangianus, in northern Sardinia. The report also separates confirmed occurrences from older records that had become doubtful. Dracunculus vulgaris, recorded historically in Umbria at Colle della Trinità and Isola Maggiore in Lake Trasimeno, was confirmed near Perugia at Monte di Lacugnano.

Approximately 10 plants occupied about 4,000 square metres of open, rocky Mediterranean-type scrub with a calcareous substrate at 440 metres. Erodium salzmannii was confirmed at Scarlino in Toscana, where it grew in dry grassland at 45 metres; the observation is the first record for peninsular Italy, following a doubtful report from Elba and established records in Sardegna. Several other species were rediscovered after earlier regional reports went unconfirmed.

Maresia nana, reported for Pineto in Abruzzo in 1954 but not subsequently confirmed, was recorded beside a road on sandy ground at Marina di Vasto. Mentha microphylla, first reported in Calabria in 1982 and later regarded as no longer recorded, was found near a fountain at Amendolea in Reggio Calabria. Orobanche pubescens was confirmed in Calabria at Favare near Cirò, where the specimen was recorded growing on Trifolium repens, and Sedum caespitosum was confirmed along a country road near Volta Cammino in Campania, where it formed a small population.

The floristic notes also revise the status of native trees. Prunus avium is changed from naturalized alien to native in both Marche and Umbria. The authors state that no natural, geographical or environmental barriers, nor discontinuities in soil, support treating the populations of those regions differently from populations in surrounding areas.

Ulmus laevis was recorded for the first time in Valle d’Aosta in alluvial woodland along the Dora Baltea near Châtillon and Saint-Vincent. In light of documented native and relictual populations in Piemonte and Lombardia, and the alluvial habitat of the new records, the authors classify the Valle d’Aosta populations as native and relictual. Ranunculus rionii was found in the Isonzo River delta near Staranzano, Friuli Venezia-Giulia, in temporary pools occupying hollows within meadow bordering brackish marsh at the mouth of the river.

Tofieldia calyculata was located in temporary flooded ponds along a stream in the Monti della Laga at 1,650 metres in Lazio, marking its arrival in the regional flora. Viola canina subsp. canina was confirmed near Serra San Bruno in Calabria, where specimens grew in an uncultivated grassy area beside a garden on mildly acidic soil derived from granite; this is the southernmost recorded occurrence of the subspecies in Italy. Coastal and Mediterranean habitats yielded further additions and confirmations.

Ipomoea imperati, regarded as native to Italy and supported by historical Italian records, was confirmed along beaches beside Lake Fusaro and Monte di Cuma in Campania. These localities form the northernmost part of its range, but their persistence is limited: the first site had been destroyed, while the other two contained only one or a few individuals. Sporobolus virginicus was confirmed in grassy ground beside the railway near Pietra Ligure in Liguria.

In Puglia, Scorzonera laciniata subsp. laciniata was confirmed on silty clay at Gravina in Puglia, and Ferulago galbanifera was confirmed at Pulicchio di Gravina and on the rocky spur of Pietra Longa, where it was described as very abundant. The alien flora includes new casual records as well as the confirmation or re-evaluation of previous reports. Allium schoenoprasum subsp. schoenoprasum was recorded for the first time in Campania at Altavilla Silentina, where the specimens came from a single large clump thought to have originated through seed dispersal.

Barbarea verna was reported as new to Veneto from one plant on gravel and sand beside the Adige River at San Giovanni Lupatoto. Long-standing alien records were also examined. Buxus sempervirens was recorded as a casual regional alien new to Puglia at Bosco Marinelli near Bitonto, where it occurs scattered in a wood dominated by Quercus pubescens.

A herbarium specimen from 1898 and later literature document a nineteenth-century introduction, while young plants clearly produced by seed were observed during the survey. Capparis sicula, previously reported doubtfully from walls in Bergamo, was confirmed as a casual regional alien in Lombardia at Cascina Campazzo in Milan, although only one individual was present. The report also summarizes nomenclatural, distributional and status corrections and corrigenda arising from other literature and from the Portal to the Flora of Italy.

Subject of Research: New, confirmed and revised records of native and alien vascular plants in Italy

Article Title: Notulae to the Italian native vascular flora: 14

Article References: Bartolucci, F., Domina, G., Adorni, M., Andreatta, S., Angiolini, C., Bacchetta, G., Banfi, E., Barberis, D., Bertani, G., Bonari, G., Buccomino, G., Calvia, G., Caputo, P., Cavallaro, V., Conti, F., Cuena-Lombraña, A., D’Aleo, F., D’Amico, F. S., De Fine, G., … Lastrucci, L. (2022). Notulae to the Italian native vascular flora: 14. Italian Botanist, 14, 119-131. https://doi.org/10.3897/italianbotanist.14.97813

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/italianbotanist.14.97813

Keywords: Italian flora, vascular plants, floristic records, native species, alien species, plant distribution, herbarium specimens, Mediterranean flora, Sardinia, field botany, Notulae, Italian

The research team sampled 32 natural populations across northern Algeria, following an east-west biogeographic gradient that spans humid Kabyle mountains, semi-arid Oranian plains and the subhumid slopes of the Tlemcen range near the Moroccan border. Seven taxa were examined: Narcissus tazetta, N. pachybolbus, N. papyraceus, N. elegans, N. serotinus in the broad sense including N. obsoletus, and N. cantabricus. From each site the researchers collected bulbs, leaves and flowers from three to ten plants, depositing voucher specimens in the herbarium of the National Agronomic School in Algiers.

The technique at the heart of the study is disarmingly simple in concept. Young roots grown from collected bulbs were treated with colchicine to arrest dividing cells at metaphase, the stage at which chromosomes are most condensed and visible. The roots were then fixed, hydrolysed in hydrochloric acid and stained with Schiff’s reagent using the classic Feulgen method, before being squashed onto slides and photographed under a microscope. With the chromosomes laid bare, the team could count them, classify them as metacentric, submetacentric, subtelocentric or telocentric according to the position of the centromere, and calculate asymmetry indices that reveal how unevenly genetic material is distributed among the chromosomes of a complement.

The results are striking for their diversity. Narcissus tazetta, the polymorphic Mediterranean daffodil long famous for horticultural confusion, proved consistently diploid with 2n = 20 across all ten Algerian and Tunisian populations examined, although one or two supernumerary B chromosomes occasionally turned up. Its karyotype formula in most populations was 10 sm + 10 st, but eastern populations near the Tunisian border showed distinct, less asymmetric formulas, hinting at a subtle east-west genetic structure within the species. Meanwhile N. elegans, which some authors had considered a tetraploid with a base number of x = 5, also showed 2n = 20 in every population, with ideograms suggesting homologous chromosome pairing consistent with a diploid at x = 10.

Perhaps the most satisfying resolution concerns two species that have been muddled since the nineteenth century. Narcissus pachybolbus, discovered near Oran in 1846 and long treated by the great Algerian botanist René Maire as a mere subspecies of N. tazetta, and the paperwhite daffodil N. papyraceus, a relic of ancient cultivation now naturalized in Algiers cemeteries, both turned out to be diploids with 2n = 22. Crucially, however, they differ in karyotype structure and in asymmetry indices: N. pachybolbus carries satellites on two submetacentric and two subtelocentric pairs and possesses the largest total haploid chromosome length in the study at 151.92 micrometres, while N. papyraceus shows satellites on its third metacentric pair instead. Together with morphometric analysis, these data confirm both as full species, vindicating the modern nomenclatural databases that had already separated them.

The N. serotinus complex proved to be the puzzle’s wildest piece. Across the sampled range the team found three chromosome numbers: tetraploid 2n = 20, an unusual 2n = 28, and hexaploid 2n = 30. Multivariate analysis of morphology showed that corona colour tracked the ploidy boundary with remarkable fidelity. Individuals with yellow coronas corresponded to true N. serotinus at the tetraploid and hexaploid levels, while hexaploids bearing bright orange coronas corresponded to N. obsoletus, a natural hybrid thought to combine genomes of N. elegans and N. serotinus. The 2n = 28 cytotypes, found only in the far northwest near Oran and Tlemcen, are likely the product of aneuploid loss of two chromosomes from the hexaploid complement and represent a novel record for the region.

These findings resolve a controversy flagged by the IUCN Red List, which had deemed the presence of true N. serotinus in Algeria doubtful. The study shows that both N. serotinus and N. obsoletus are indeed present, often growing mixed together in the same populations around Algiers, with rarer pure tetraploid N. serotinus populations in the east. The hexaploid hybrid form, previously documented from Spain and suspected across the Mediterranean as far as Syria, is now confirmed as widespread in North Africa, extending from west to east across the country in a range of habitats.

Perhaps the most biogeographically significant result concerns N. cantabricus, a white-flowered hoop-petticoat daffodil of the section Bulbocodii. The two Algerian populations sampled, in the Mansourah forest near Tlemcen and beside Lake Beni Bahdel close to the Moroccan border, proved diploid with 2n = 14 and a symmetrical karyotype dominated by metacentric and submetacentric chromosomes. Until now, diploids of this species were known only from the Cantabrian Mountains and central Spain, while tetraploids occur in Morocco’s Anti-Atlas. The Algerian plants, which occasionally carry a single B chromosome, are therefore the southernmost diploid record in the entire range of this polyploid complex, a find the authors suggest may reflect adaptive responses to aridity at the edge of the species’ distribution.

Beyond the individual species accounts, the study demonstrates how powerfully chromosome structure complements morphology in a genus notorious for hybridization and reticulate evolution. A principal component analysis of 186 individuals scored for 24 morphological traits cleanly separated the tazetta-pachybolbus-papyraceus group from the elegans-serotinus-cantabricus group along the first axis, mirroring the chromosome counts exactly. Characters such as scape length, bulb size, flowers per inflorescence and corona height and colour did the discriminating work, while the karyological data explained the deeper splits. The approach shows that where floral characters fail, cells do not.

Algeria sits at the crossroads of the western Mediterranean floras, linking Iberia, Morocco and Tunisia, yet its cytotaxonomic literature has remained sparse. By filling that gap for one of the region’s most charismatic genera, the study not only settles centuries of nomenclatural quarrels but also provides raw material for understanding how polyploidy and structural chromosome change have shaped daffodil diversity across the Mediterranean basin. For a genus that has enchanted gardeners since antiquity, it turns out the answers to its taxonomic riddles were written all along in the number and shape of its chromosomes.

Subject of Research: Cytotaxonomy and karyotype variation of Narcissus species in Algeria

Article Title: Cytotaxonomic investigations on species of genus Narcissus ( Amaryllidaceae ) from Algeria

Article References: Boukhebache, N. C., Amirouche, N., & Amirouche, R. (2022). Cytotaxonomic investigations on species of genus Narcissus (Amaryllidaceae) from Algeria. Comparative Cytogenetics, 16(1), 55-76. https://doi.org/10.3897/compcytogen.v16.i1.78852

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/compcytogen.v16.i1.78852

Keywords: Narcissus, Amaryllidaceae, cytogenetics, karyotype, polyploidy, Algeria, chromosome counting, taxonomics, B chromosomes, aneuploidy, Mediterranean flora, Cytotaxonomic

The expedition followed the phytosociological tradition established by the late Spanish botanist Salvador Rivas-Martínez, whose celebrated Itinera Geobotanica series inspired the Italian team’s approach. In total, the researchers produced 29 original vegetation relevés and 11 synthetic relevés compiled from earlier bibliographic sources, allowing them to describe, classify and compare the plant communities encountered along five carefully chosen geobotanical itineraries. Each relevé records every species within a defined plot along with estimates of cover and abundance, providing a quantitative snapshot of the vegetation that can be compared across the entire Mediterranean region.

The study area is geologically and climatically remarkable. Mount San Giuliano, rising to 791 metres above sea level with the ancient town of Erice on its summit, and Mount Cofano at 659 metres are both built of Mesozoic carbonate rocks interspersed with Pleistocene calcarenites. The Egadi Islands of Marettimo and Levanzo emerged during the early Miocene as part of the so-called Egadi Range. Marettimo, dominated by Pizzo Falcone at 686 metres, consists of dolomite, marl and limestone dating from the Middle Triassic to the Lower Lias, while Levanzo is formed of Mesozoic and Tertiary carbonate and clastic-terrigenous substrates. All the sites enjoy a classic Mediterranean climate with markedly dry summers and mild winters, moderated by the surrounding sea, and all belong to the Natura 2000 network as Special Areas of Conservation.

The first itinerary took the group to Erice on Mount San Giuliano, a mountain often cited as one of the richest biotopes in Sicily despite centuries of human pressure. On the walls of the Castle of Venus and the surrounding carbonate outcrops, the botanists documented a chasmophytic community known as Scabioso creticae-Centauretum ucriae subass. brassicetosum drepanensis, bristling with endemics such as Brassica villosa subsp. drepanensis, the striking knapweed Centaurea erycina and the cliff-loving Dianthus rupicola subsp. rupicola. In cool, shaded gullies below the Torretta Pepoli, the team recorded patches of laurel woodland referred to Acanthomollis-Lauretum nobilis, a rare micro-forest sustained by moisture condensing from the fogs that frequently cloak the summit, where average annual temperatures fall to about 14.5 degrees Celsius compared with more than 18 degrees on the coast.

Marettimo proved to be the scientific heart of the expedition. Unlike the other Egadi islands, which were joined to Sicily during the last glacial maximum, Marettimo remained isolated, turning it into a refuge for numerous species missing elsewhere in Sicily. The island’s vascular flora of 499 taxa includes eight endemics: three palaeoendemics, Oncostema ughii, Bupleurum dianthifolium and Thymus richardii subsp. nitidus, and five schizoendemics, Allium franciniae, Helichrysum panormitanum subsp. messeriae, Limonium tenuiculum, Prospero hierae and Senecio aegadensis. Relict shrubs such as Daphne sericea and Thymelaea tartonraira, both completely absent from the rest of Sicily, survive in the island’s higher stands, while rosemary climbs to elevations unusual for Sicily, probably because isolation shielded the island from the climate-driven plant migrations of past glaciations.

On the island’s north-western coast, the team made one of the expedition’s headline discoveries: a previously undescribed plant community dominated by the cornflag, Moraea sisyrinchium, an iris relative of southern Mediterranean distribution. The new association, formally named Catapodio pauciflori-Moraeetum sisyrinchii ass. nova, describes an ephemeral coastal dry grassland flourishing on shallow red soils over carbonate rock, blooming in early spring alongside annuals such as Plantago coronopus, Catapodium pauciflorum, Silene colorata and Bellis annua. The authors framed it within the alliance Plantagini-Catapodion balearici of the order Stipo-Bupleuretalia semicompositi and the class Stipo-Trachynietea distachyae, and supported the description with a synoptic table comparing 17 Mediterranean plant communities in which Moraea sisyrinchium is frequent, from Sardinia and Malta to the Balearic Islands and southern Spain. Notably, no association with absolute dominance of this species had been described before.

The Marettimo excursions also stirred a lively taxonomic debate over the island’s holm oak woods. The association Daphno sericeae-Quercetum ilicis, described in 1983 for the fog-drenched heights around Pizzo Falcone, carries nomenclatural priority over the more widely used name Pistacio lentisci-Quercetum ilicis published two years later for thermophilous holm oak woods across western and southern Sicily. Because the phytosociological code forbids downgrading an earlier validly published name, the authors conclude that only two solutions exist: either treat the Daphne-rich Marettimo woods as distinct from the rest of Sicily’s holm oak forests, or petition the nomenclature committee to conserve the later name. Pending resolution, the team adopted the older name in accordance with the code, illustrating how field excursions can expose unresolved threads in the classification of Mediterranean vegetation.

The debate extended to the pine forests of Marettimo, where Aleppo pine woods referred to Erico multiflorae-Pinetum halepensis grow on steep, partially consolidated screes. Many of these stands derive from 1970s plantations that have matured into self-reproducing naturalised woods now advancing into surrounding garrigue and maquis. Their higher-rank classification remains formally undecided: a 2021 proposal to create a new class, Pinetea halepensis, separate from the broadleaved-dominated Quercetea ilicis, is being evaluated by the European Vegetation Classification Committee, which has flagged concerns including the lack of true diagnostic species and the inclusion of anthropogenic plantations in the underlying analysis. A vote was scheduled for 2023, meaning the Marettimo pines sit at the centre of an ongoing continent-wide argument about how Mediterranean conifer forests should be classified.

Levanzo, the driest and least verdant of the two islands visited, offered a contrast shaped by decades of intense agro-silvo-pastoral land use. Its landscape of low scrub, garrigue and grassland is dominated by the wintergreen Periploca angustifolia and tree spurge maquis known as Periploco angustifoliae-Euphorbietum dendroidis, which degrades into Hyparrhenia grasslands and ephemeral Stipellula capensis meadows on eroded soils. The island’s flora of 468 taxa includes 15 endemics, none exclusive to Levanzo, but several species of phytogeographical interest, among them Periploca angustifolia and Aristolochia navicularis, both absent from mainland Sicily, and Crocus longiflorus at the westernmost limit of its range. Near the coast, halophytic vegetation of Limonietum bocconei fringes the wave-beaten rocks.

The final itinerary skirted the coastline of Mount Cofano, a Nature Reserve whose 651 vascular taxa include 48 endemics, three of them exclusive to the mountain: Erica sicula subsp. sicula, Helichrysum panormitanum subsp. brulloi and Limonium cophanense. Centuries of deforestation and near-annual wildfires have replaced the original forests with dwarf palm scrub and vigorous Ampelodesmos grasslands, both fire-adapted pyrophytes that now dominate the slopes. The expedition concluded with floristic updates across all sites: five taxa proved new to Marettimo, including Lysimachia loeflingii recorded for the first time in Sicily, but also the invasive ornamental hybrid Kalanchoë ×houghtonii, flagged as a potential threat to the island’s native flora. Further novelties emerged on Levanzo and Mount Cofano, including the discovery of the narrowly Mediterranean grass Hyparrhenia sinaica. The authors emphasise that these results confirm the value of collaborative fieldwork among specialists in vascular flora and vegetation science for charting the plant diversity of the Italian territory, in one of the richest biodiversity hotspots of the entire Mediterranean basin.

Subject of Research: Vegetation science and phytosociological survey of the Egadi Islands and western Sicily, Italy

Article Title: Itineraries of the Working Group for Vegetation Science of the Italian Botanical Society – 1 (2022): Excursion to the Egadi Islands, Mount San Giuliano and Mount Cofano (Trapani, western Sicily, Italy)

Article References: Gianguzzi, L., Guarino, R., Bazan, G., Di Pietro, R., Acosta, A. T. R., Bajona, E., Bolliger, P., Bonomi, C., Camuffo, A., Console, C., Fascetti, S., Fortini, P., Frattaroli, A., Mei, G., Mondello, F., Olivari, S., Rizzieri, M., Rosati, L., Sarmati, S., … Stinca, A. (2023). Itineraries of the Working Group for Vegetation Science of the Italian Botanical Society – 1 (2022): Excursion to the Egadi Islands, Mount San Giuliano and Mount Cofano (Trapani, western Sicily, Italy). Italian Botanist, 16, 1-57. https://doi.org/10.3897/italianbotanist.16.103989

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/italianbotanist.16.103989

Keywords: phytosociology, Sicily, Egadi Islands, Marettimo, vegetation science, plant endemism, Mediterranean flora, new plant association, holm oak woods, Natura 2000, biodiversity hotspot, Italian Botanical Society

The expedition brought together eighteen active participants, along with six guests, drawn from universities and research institutions across Italy. Between 19 and 22 April 2022, the team traversed five carefully planned routes: three covering the southern, western and northern sectors of Lipari, one crossing the southern part of Panarea, and a final circuit through the main village of Lipari and its surroundings. The routes were designed to maximize environmental heterogeneity among sampling sites, to target areas with scarce floristic records, and to include localities of recognized naturalistic value. Habitats encountered ranged from dry stone walls and roadside verges to maquis scrub, garrigue, sea cliffs, beaches, abandoned agricultural terraces and ornamental plantings around settlements.

In total, the participants prepared 1,664 herbarium specimens, each pressed, dried and labelled for long-term preservation in public and private herbaria. Every collector drafted an individual list of the species they had gathered, and the coordinator of the working group later merged these lists and convened a workshop at the Herbarium Mediterraneum Panormitanum of the University of Palermo in February 2023 to revise critical collections and resolve unidentified specimens. The resulting inventory comprises 386 specific and subspecific taxa belonging to 241 genera and 74 families. Taxonomic nomenclature follows the updated checklists of the vascular flora native and alien to Italy, together with subsequent updates compiled in the Portal to the Flora of Italy.

Perhaps the most striking result concerns the alien species. Of the 386 taxa recorded, 48, or 12.4 percent, are not native to the region: 20 are casual, 26 naturalized and two invasive. The invasive pair, Ailanthus altissima, the tree of heaven, and Oxalis pes-caprae, the Bermuda buttercup, are notorious invaders elsewhere in the Mediterranean. Among the aliens, one discovery stands out: Oenothera odorata, an evening primrose native to South America, is here recorded as a naturalized species new to the entire Italian vascular flora. The Lipari population had previously been misidentified as Oenothera stricta subsp. stricta in records dating back to 2008. Careful morphological study of the newly collected specimens, following the standard taxonomic treatment of the genus and confirmed by direct comparison with original material of both species, established the correct identity. The authors note that other Italian records currently attributed to Oenothera stricta subsp. stricta also require verification, suggesting that this South American plant may be more widespread in Italy than previously thought.

Four additional aliens were recorded for the first time in Sicily. Dimorphotheca ecklonis, an ornamental daisy from South Africa, Nassella tenuissima, a fine-leaved Argentinian grass popular in gardens, Solanum torvum, a spiny shrub known as turkey berry, and Viola wittrockiana, the familiar garden pansy, all turned up during the survey. The finding of Nassella tenuissima carries particular concern: the grass was recently planted as an ornamental near a winery on Lipari and is already spreading into surrounding areas, probably through wind dispersal of its seeds. The researchers strongly recommend its removal before it becomes naturalized on the island, a cautionary example of how horticultural choices can seed future invasions on ecologically fragile islands.

The survey also documented the escape of other ornamental plantings. Phyllostachys aurea, golden bamboo, is being maintained as a living fence around a villa on Panarea and has begun reproducing vegetatively beyond its intended bounds, sending up new shoots in the surrounding area. Such observations illustrate a recurring theme of the study: the ornamental trade and gardening practices around settlements act as a continuous pipeline of potential invaders onto these small islands, where native communities have evolved in isolation and often lack defences against vigorous newcomers.

Against this wave of aliens, the native endemic flora of the two islands proved remarkably limited in the sampled area. Only three Italian endemics were found: Centaurea aeolica, a knapweed exclusive to the Aeolian archipelago, Helichrysum litoreum, a curry-scented everlasting also present in other Tyrrhenian Italian regions, and Dianthus rupicola subsp. aeolicus, a cliff-dwelling pink that also occurs on the promontory of Capo Milazzo in northeastern Sicily. Both the helichrysum and the pink are listed as Least Concern in the Red List of the Italian endemic flora. Centaurea aeolica is the only one of the three restricted entirely to the Aeolian Islands, a reminder of how narrowly some endemics are distributed and how easily a single localized disturbance could erase them. The researchers emphasize that small Mediterranean islands are biodiversity hotspots harbouring rare habitats and endemic species, making the spread of invasive species a particularly serious environmental threat there.

Not every significant find involved an alien. The survey relocated Wahlenbergia lobeliodes subsp. nutabunda on Panarea at Costa del Capraro, roughly 120 years after it was last recorded there by the pioneering botanist Michele Lojacono-Pojero in 1903, and about 40 years after a later record from Cala dei Zimmari. This ephemeral plant, which also occurs in Sardinia and Calabria, has a very short vegetative cycle, making it easy to overlook and rarely reported. Equally notable was Serapias nurrica subsp. nurrica, an orchid absent from earlier published sources for the islands, found on Panarea within old abandoned agricultural terraces and on wasteland in the southern and western parts of Lipari. Gamochaeta pensylvanica, a North American neophyte first collected in Italy in 1980 and in Sicily in 2015, was also recorded, apparently introduced as a contaminant by plant nurseries and steadily expanding its range.

The choice of Lipari and Panarea reflects a deliberate strategy. The Italian Botanical Society’s working group has spent two decades organizing floristic excursions to poorly explored corners of the country, selecting territories based on gaps in floristic knowledge. Although botanists have visited the Aeolian Islands since the first half of the nineteenth century, beginning with Giovanni Gussone’s landmark floras of Sicily in the 1820s through the 1840s, followed by Lojacono-Pojero in 1877 and 1902 and Giuseppe Zodda in 1902, complete and updated floristic lists for Lipari and Panarea have never been published. Gioachino Ferro of the University of Catania devoted much of his career to the archipelago’s flora, but his death halted publication of his synthesis. Before this survey, the Wikiplantbase #Sicilia database held only 262 records for Lipari and just 107 for Panarea.

Both islands are quiescent volcanoes shaped by fire and by centuries of human activity. Lipari, the largest of the Aeolian Islands at 37.2 square kilometres and reaching 594 metres on Mount Sant’Angelo, is built of varied volcanic formations producing ever-shifting regosols and lithosols, and more than 660 taxa have been documented for it, 14 percent of them alien to Italy. Panarea, far smaller at 3.3 square kilometres and 420 metres at its peak, is composed of andesitic to dacitic and rhyolitic rocks, with weak hydrothermal activity on Lipari’s western side and active submarine fumaroles about 2.5 kilometres off its coast. Human presence dates back to the fifth millennium before present, and Greek and Roman colonization brought the first profound landscape changes; until the early twentieth century most of the islands’ surface was cultivated. Today agriculture covers only about 15 percent of Lipari and 5 percent of Panarea, and abandoned fields are being recolonized by natural vegetation, including Erica arborea and Arbutus unedo maquis, Cistus and Genista tyrrhena garrigues, and grasslands. The new inventory provides the baseline that conservationists and island managers need to track these changes, to catch invasive species before they take hold, and to protect the endemic plants that exist nowhere else.

Subject of Research: Floristic inventory of the volcanic islands Lipari and Panarea in the Aeolian archipelago, Sicily

Article Title: Contribution to the floristic knowledge of Lipari and Panarea Islands (Sicilia, Italy)

Article References: Barone, G., Bajona, E., Bartolucci, F., Cancellieri, L., Caruso, G., Conti, F., Domina, G., Fascetti, S., Franzoni, J., Laface, V. L. A., Pinzani, L., Rosati, L., Scoppola, A., Stinca, A., Tilia, A., & Crisafulli, A. (2023). Contribution to the floristic knowledge of Lipari and Panarea Islands (Sicilia, Italy). Italian Botanist, 16, 59-71. https://doi.org/10.3897/italianbotanist.16.113415

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/italianbotanist.16.113415

Keywords: floristics, Aeolian Islands, Lipari, Panarea, alien species, endemic plants, herbarium specimens, biodiversity, invasive species, Sicily, Mediterranean flora, Oenothera odorata

The study, published in Vegetation Classification and Survey, involved 94 vegetation relevés collected across six areas of traditional agriculture between April and June 2017. Researchers recorded 209 vascular plant species belonging to 150 genera and 41 families, with a mean of 22 species per field and a Shannon diversity index of 3.04. Five families dominated the spectrum: Asteraceae, Poaceae, Fabaceae, Caryophyllaceae and Brassicaceae together accounted for 55 percent of the recorded diversity, a pattern that mirrors the composition of the Moroccan flora as a whole.

Segetal plants, the wild species that grow unsown in cereal fields, have long been dismissed as weeds that compete with crops for water and nutrients. But ecologists increasingly recognize them as a vulnerable component of farmland biodiversity. Across Europe, herbicide use and agricultural intensification have made obligate arable plants one of the most threatened groups of flora, prompting conservation programs such as nationwide networks of protected fields in Central Europe and the concept of High Nature Value farming.

The Moroccan fields studied here operate under very different conditions. Farmers practice shallow tillage with animal-drawn swing ploughs or, on steep slopes, by hand with picks and hoes. Fields are small, averaging around a quarter of a hectare, and rotations include fallow periods that feed livestock, since weeds are an important fodder resource. Chemical herbicides are generally absent, and some wild plants are even gathered for traditional dishes such as Bekoule, which contains species of mallow, sorrel and sow-thistle.

The life-form spectrum of the flora reflected these practices. Therophytes, annual plants that complete their life cycle within a single season, dominated with 75 percent of species, as expected in cultivated fields. But biennial and perennial herbs were surprisingly well represented, making up a notably larger share than in comparable surveys elsewhere in the Maghreb. The researchers attribute this to shallow tillage and regular fallowing, which allow perennating structures to survive between crops. Even chamaephytes and phanerophytes, woody plants rarely tolerated in intensive systems, accounted for about 6.6 percent of the flora, including relicts of former woodlands such as mastic trees and dwarf palms.

Chorological analysis showed that species with broad Mediterranean distributions accounted for 44 percent of the flora, while cosmopolitan species ranked second at about 20 percent. Crucially, the flora was overwhelmingly native: almost half of the species were agrestal, meaning they are confined to arable fields, and nearly a third were apophytes, native plants that occur both in natural habitats and in fields. Neophytes, recently introduced alien species, were almost entirely absent, appearing only in a single cluster of fields associated with cannabis cultivation on cleared woodland.

The conservation value of this flora is considerable. The survey recorded 29 regional endemics, representing 14 percent of the segetal flora, along with species of national rarity, including two considered very rare in Morocco, Brassica barrelieri and Echinops spinosissimus, and others classified as rare or suspected rare. The researchers argue that these fields fulfil the criteria of High Nature Value agriculture, a European framework recognizing farmland that combines low-input management with landscape-scale habitat diversity, and they suggest developing comparable evaluation systems for Moroccan arable land.

A numerical classification of the vegetation data using modified TWINSPAN separated the relevés into four clusters corresponding largely to the sampled areas, revealing that local conditions of climate, soil and land use shape species composition more than broad regional patterns. The communities belong to the order Brometalia rubenti-tectorum, the thermomediterranean arable vegetation of the western Mediterranean, but their alliance-level assignment remains open. Distinctive species combinations pointed to environmental gradients: slightly acidic sandy soils supported plants such as Rumex bucephalophorus and Silene gallica, while nutrient-rich clayey fields favored a different set of indicators. The presence of perennials such as Dittrichia viscosa and Helminthotheca echioides signaled the fallow phases of the rotation.

Comparisons with other Mediterranean studies place the Rif findings in context. Surveys of comparable numbers of fields in northeastern Spain, southern Spain, Greece and Turkey recorded between 71 and 175 species, well below the 209 found here. Studies in Crete, Portugal, Algeria and other parts of northwestern Morocco reported higher totals, but those involved more sampled plots. The high field-scale diversity of the Moroccan traditional systems stems from moderate land-use intensity, the absence of herbicides and rotations that include fallow, the authors conclude.

Yet this biodiversity is under threat. Northwestern Morocco is undergoing rapid landscape change driven by socio-economic pressures: small fields on poor, eroded soils no longer sustain subsistence farming, prompting rural exodus, land abandonment, intensification with synthetic fertilizers, and in places the expansion of cannabis cultivation. Structural features that once enriched the fields, such as patches of the dwarf palm Chamaerops humilis spared from tillage, have largely disappeared in recent decades. The authors warn that without policy support for the farmers who maintain these systems, both the traditional agroecosystems and their rare segetal species could vanish. They call for a national red list of arable plants and for conservation measures that simultaneously strengthen the socio-economic position of local communities, arguing that the survival of this living heritage depends on the survival of the farming culture that created it.

Subject of Research: Segetal plant diversity in traditional cereal agroecosystems of the Rif Mountains, Morocco

Article Title: Plant diversity in traditional agroecosystems of North Morocco

Article References: Chakkour, S., Bergmeier, E., Meyer, S., Kassout, J., Kadiri, M., & Ater, M. (2023). Plant diversity in traditional agroecosystems of North Morocco. Vegetation Classification and Survey, 4, 31-45. https://doi.org/10.3897/vcs.86024

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/VCS.86024

Keywords: agrobiodiversity, segetal flora, Morocco, Rif Mountains, traditional agriculture, High Nature Value farming, plant communities, endemic species, Mediterranean flora, weed ecology, agroecosystems, conservation

Rhamnus is a wide-ranging genus of the temperate and subtropical Northern Hemisphere, comprising more than 100 species, 37 of which grow in the Mediterranean region. Within the genus, section Alaternus includes Mediterranean and Macaronesian species such as R. alaternus, R. lojaconoi, R. ludovici-salvatoris, R. glandulosa and R. integrifolia. Rhamnus alaternus, an evergreen tree often planted as an ornamental, is morphologically highly variable and, problematically for botanists, has a documented capacity to hybridise. In the Balearic Islands it coexists with its close relative R. ludovici-salvatoris, and distinguishing the two — especially where hybrids or stunted, environmentally stressed specimens are involved — has taxonomic and nomenclatural consequences, from confusing reports of the endemic species in the eastern Iberian Peninsula to uncertainty over the true distribution of their hybrid.

To test whether scent could resolve these ambiguities, researchers sampled 35 plants — 14 female and 21 male — from 13 wild sites across the Balearic Islands and the eastern Iberian Peninsula, together with cultivated hybrids obtained by manual artificial hybridisation. The hybrid material came from the locality of Tirant in northern Minorca, the only known site where R. × bermejoi coexists with both parental species. Floral volatiles were collected using headspace solid phase micro-extraction: ten flowers from each plant were sealed in vials at 25 °C, and a polydimethylsiloxane-divinylbenzene fibre was exposed to the air above them for 30 minutes to adsorb the emitted compounds.

The trapped volatiles were then analysed by gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry within 24 hours of collection. Compounds were identified by matching mass spectra against the Wiley and NIST08 libraries, cross-checked with calculated retention indices, and the principal components were verified against synthetic standards. Because total emission varied strongly between individuals, the team used relative amounts — each compound’s peak area as a proportion of the total — and excluded likely artefacts. Statistical treatment included permutational multivariate analysis of variance on Bray-Curtis dissimilarities, non-metric multidimensional scaling to visualise group separation, analysis of similarities to test for sex-related differences, and similarity percentage analysis to pinpoint the compounds driving the divergence between species.

The results were striking. Flowers produced 41 detectable volatile compounds, 22 of which were abundant and frequent enough to matter. No relevant volatiles were traced to the flower pedicels, confirming that the signals genuinely originate in floral tissue. The two species proved significantly different both qualitatively and quantitatively. Rhamnus alaternus emitted an ensemble of terpenoids absent from its relative: the monoterpenes ocimene and linalool with related compounds such as linalool oxides, linalyl formate and hotrienol; the sesquiterpenes alpha- and beta-caryophyllene; and the ionones alpha-ionone and dihydro-beta-ionone, which together reached nearly half of the total emission in some samples. Acetic acid hexyl ester was also exclusive to this species.

Rhamnus ludovici-salvatoris, by contrast, showed a remarkably uniform profile dominated by benzoid esters. Methyl salicylate accounted for 83.3% of its floral aroma and methyl benzoate for 9.2%, with farnesene and alpha-farnesene rounding out its signature compounds. SIMPER analysis showed that just four compounds — methyl salicylate, (Z)-3-hexen-1-ol acetate, the ionone complex and beta-caryophyllene — explain 75% of the differences between the two species. A good illustration of the quantitative contrast is (Z)-3-hexen-1-ol acetate, a so-called green volatile, which made up 25.92% of the emission in R. alaternus but a negligible 0.65% in R. ludovici-salvatoris, and even then appeared in fewer than half the samples.

Perhaps the most telling finding concerned chemical consistency. Rhamnus alaternus proved chemically heterogeneous: some individuals showed single compounds at levels up to 89.9%, while other plants entirely lacked those same components. The endemic R. ludovici-salvatoris was the opposite — despite a larger number of samples, its major compounds appeared in 85 to 100% of individuals. This pattern mirrors known genetic diversity, which is much higher in populations of R. alaternus than in the narrow endemic. Neither species differed in scent between male and female flowers, ruling out sex-based chemical dimorphism.

The hybrid R. × bermejoi turned out to lean chemically toward R. alaternus. Its volatile profile was far more similar to that parent than to R. ludovici-salvatoris, and crucially, no novel compounds appeared — the hybrids produced only combinations of compounds inherited from the parental species, in amounts tending toward the R. alaternus condition. Since hybrids across the plant kingdom sometimes generate new metabolites or transgressive emission rates, the absence of novelty here suggests that hybridisation has not chemically reconfigured these plants, and that scent alone cannot separate the hybrid from one of its parents.

The ecological picture that emerges is equally interesting. Both species are pollinated mainly by Hymenoptera, particularly the honey bee Apis mellifera, and the dominant compound classes in each — terpenoids in R. alaternus, benzoids in R. ludovici-salvatoris — are known bee attractants. The shared pollinator is therefore the likely vector mediating hybridisation. Unlike cases where hybrids emit a richer scent palette that attracts additional pollinators and erodes reproductive isolation, the hybrids here show no such expansion, which may help explain why they remain rare. Methyl salicylate and methyl benzoate, beyond attracting pollinators, also act as airborne stress signals in plants, hinting that the endemic species’ scent may partly reflect its physiological condition under Mediterranean conditions, where its lower photosynthetic efficiency and inability to resprout have contributed to population decline.

The authors conclude that floral volatile compounds can serve as an effective discriminatory character among species of section Alaternus, even though they cannot distinguish the hybrid from R. alaternus. The suggestion now awaits testing on plants from other populations of R. alaternus and on the section’s remaining members, including R. lojaconoi and the Macaronesian endemics R. glandulosa and R. integrifolia. If floral scent proves as discriminating across the wider group, botanists may have gained a new, chemically grounded instrument for charting species boundaries — and for untangling the hybrid swamps that have long clouded them.

Subject of Research: Taxonomic use of floral volatile organic compounds in Rhamnus sect. Alaternus and its hybrid

Article Title: Can floral volatile organic compounds contribute to the taxonomy of the Rhamnus sect. Alaternus ?

Article References: Llorens, L., Ferriol, P., Tomàs, J., García, M. T., & Gil, L. (2023). Can floral volatile organic compounds contribute to the taxonomy of the Rhamnus sect. Alaternus?. Italian Botanist, 16, 149-164. https://doi.org/10.3897/italianbotanist.16.116255

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/italianbotanist.16.116255

Keywords: Rhamnus alaternus, Rhamnus ludovici-salvatoris, floral volatiles, volatile organic compounds, taxonomy, hybridisation, Mediterranean flora, Balearic Islands, terpenoids, benzoids, pollination, chemotaxonomy

The distinction between the plant groups recorded in the survey rests on a classification scheme that botanists use to describe how long a non-native species has been present in a given territory. Archaeophytes are taxa introduced by human activity before 1500 CE, often arriving with the earliest waves of agriculture, and they are frequently treated as part of the traditional cultural landscape even though they are not truly indigenous. Neophytes, by contrast, arrived after that threshold, typically through trade, horticulture, or accidental transport in modern times, and they are the group most often associated with invasive behavior. Cryptogenic species occupy an intermediate and somewhat ambiguous position: their region of origin is unknown or unresolved, so ecologists cannot say with confidence whether they are native, ancient introductions, or recent arrivals. Applying this framework to the artichoke fields of Sardinia, the researchers found that the overwhelming majority of the recorded taxa — 91 of the 113 — were native to the Italian flora, while only one archaeophyte, five cryptogenic species, and sixteen neophytes were present. Within that small neophyte contingent, however, eleven species were classified as invasive in Sardinia, four as naturalized, and one as casual, a proportion that signals a meaningful degree of biological pressure on the native segetal community even though the invaders remain numerically a minority.

The life-form analysis of the surveyed flora offers a window into the ecological strategies that prevail in this disturbed agricultural habitat. Following the Raunkiaer system, which classifies plants according to the position of their surviving buds during the unfavorable season, the artichoke field flora was overwhelmingly composed of therophytes — 83 of the 113 taxa. Therophytes are annual plants that complete their entire life cycle within a single favorable season, surviving harsh periods as seeds. This strategy is exceptionally well suited to arable land, where soil disturbance, tillage, and crop management repeatedly reset the vegetation, creating open niches that short-lived, fast-reproducing species exploit before the next intervention. Hemicryptophytes, which keep their buds at or just below the soil surface, accounted for 23 taxa, while geophytes, which survive underground as bulbs, tubers, or rhizomes, contributed six. A single chamaephyte, with buds held just above the soil surface, completed the spectrum. The dominance of therophytes is a classic signature of Mediterranean segetal communities, where the combination of a hot, dry summer and recurrent agricultural disturbance favors annuals over perennial growth forms.

The chorological spectrum — the geographic distribution pattern of the recorded species — further illuminates the biogeographic character of these field communities. Mediterranean species dominated with 52 taxa, a finding consistent with Sardinia’s position at the heart of the Mediterranean Basin, one of the world’s recognized biodiversity hotspots. Widely distributed species, those with broad ranges spanning multiple biogeographic regions, came second with 20 taxa, followed by Eurasian elements with nine. This distribution reflects the interplay between the island’s native flora and the cosmopolitan weed species that have followed human agriculture across continents for millennia. The fact that Mediterranean natives still constitute the largest chorological group suggests that, despite decades of agricultural intensification, the segetal flora of Sardinian artichoke fields retains a substantial measure of regional biogeographic identity rather than having been entirely replaced by widespread generalist weeds.

Among the most frequent and abundant species recorded in the survey, a mix of native and non-native plants emerged as the characteristic companions of the artichoke crop. Three native species — Calendula arvensis, Convolvulus arvensis, and Lolium rigidum — ranked alongside the archaeophyte Avena fatua and two neophytes, Oxalis pes-caprae and Veronica persica, as the dominant elements of the field flora. Calendula arvensis, the field marigold, is a winter-annual therophyte whose bright orange flowers are a familiar sight in Mediterranean cropland and whose presence supports pollinating insects during the cooler months. Convolvulus arvensis, field bindweed, is a perennial climbing weed with an extensive root system that makes it notoriously difficult to control mechanically. Lolium rigidum, rigid ryegrass, is a widespread Mediterranean grass that has become one of the most herbicide-resistant weed species globally, posing serious management challenges in cereal and horticultural systems alike. Avena fatua, wild oat, has accompanied cereal agriculture since antiquity and exemplifies the archaeophyte category — a species whose fortunes are inseparable from the history of settled farming. Oxalis pes-caprae, the Bermuda buttercup, is a South African geophyte that has spread aggressively across the Mediterranean Basin since its introduction, reproducing almost exclusively vegetatively through bulbils and forming dense carpets that suppress native seedlings. Veronica persica, the bird’s-eye speedwell, is a Middle Eastern native that has naturalized throughout Europe and thrives in winter cereals and vegetable crops.

The coexistence of these dominant species alongside the artichoke crop illustrates the complex competitive dynamics that govern segetal communities. Globe artichoke is a perennial crop whose growing cycle may span multiple years or be managed as an annual, depending on the varietal type and cultivation area. In Sardinia, the spiny artichoke cultivar Spinoso sardo is typically planted in summer, between June and July in the northern part of the island and in August in the south, with the aid of sprinkler or drip irrigation. This summer planting, combined with the slow initial growth of the young plants, makes the crop particularly vulnerable to weed competition during the post-emergence stages, when fast-growing annual weeds can rapidly outcompete the developing artichoke for water, nutrients, and light. The three-year sampling design adopted by the researchers — with surveys conducted at least three times per year between mid-May, early July, and the end of October — was specifically designed to capture this temporal variability in weed emergence, since therophytes complete their life cycles and produce mature seeds at different points throughout the year. A single survey would inevitably miss species whose phenology falls outside the sampling window, underestimating the true floristic richness of the fields.

The methodological choice of randomly located, georeferenced plots of one square meter within each field deserves attention, as it reflects standard practice in vegetation science for quantifying species presence and abundance at a scale fine enough to detect even small and inconspicuous plants. By randomizing plot locations within each field and using different plots for each season and each year, the researchers maximized the number of species recorded and minimized the risk of bias from localized patches of particular weeds. The use of twelve plots per field across four farms provided a reasonable sampling effort for a first inventory, though the authors acknowledge that the true segetal flora of Sardinian artichoke fields may include additional species not captured by this design. The georeferencing of plots also allows future researchers to revisit the same locations and assess temporal changes in the flora, creating a baseline against which the effects of climate change, evolving management practices, or new invasions can be measured.

The broader ecological significance of segetal flora extends well beyond its role as a competitor of crops. Segetal communities provide nectar and pollen resources for pollinators, including wild bees and hoverflies, at times of the year when few other floral resources are available in simplified agricultural landscapes. They offer habitat and food for ground-dwelling arthropods, granivorous birds, and small mammals, contributing to the trophic structure of the agroecosystem. Their root systems help maintain soil structure, reduce erosion, and support microbial communities that cycle nutrients. Some segetal species are themselves crop wild relatives or harbor genetic diversity that could prove valuable for future breeding programs, particularly as agriculture faces the challenges of climate change and the need for crops adapted to hotter, drier conditions. The preservation of segetal diversity is therefore not merely an aesthetic or conservation concern but a matter of maintaining the ecological infrastructure upon which sustainable agriculture depends.

At the same time, the pressures acting on segetal flora are intensifying. The intensification of agricultural practices — including reduced crop rotation, deep tillage, intensive fertilization, landscape simplification, abandonment of low-productivity sites, and heavy reliance on chemical weed control — has been shown across Europe to reduce the richness of native segetal species while favoring a small number of highly competitive generalists and promoting the spread of neophytes and herbicide-resistant biotypes. Studies in other Italian regions have documented a homogenization trend in which native taxa and archaeophytes are displaced by neophytes, leading to a floristic structure that is increasingly similar from field to field and region to region. This biotic homogenization represents a loss not only of species but of the distinctive regional character of agricultural landscapes, replacing locally adapted communities with a cosmopolitan assemblage of aggressive weeds. The Sardinian artichoke fields, with their still-dominant Mediterranean flora, may represent a relatively favorable situation compared to more intensively managed systems elsewhere, but the presence of eleven invasive neophytes among the recorded taxa indicates that the same processes are at work.

The economic context of globe artichoke cultivation in Sardinia adds urgency to these findings. Southern Europe holds approximately forty percent of world artichoke production, and the crop has deep cultural and culinary roots in the region, with Sardinia’s spiny cultivar prized for its distinctive flavor and texture. The sustainability of this production system depends in part on managing the segetal flora in ways that balance weed control with the conservation of the beneficial components of the field community. Approaches such as cover cropping, which has been shown to suppress weed growth while enhancing soil fertility, and diversified crop rotations, which limit the spread of aggressive weed species, offer pathways toward this balance. The allelopathic properties of artichoke itself — demonstrated in laboratory studies to inhibit seed germination and seedling growth of several weed species — suggest that the crop may possess some intrinsic capacity to modulate its own weed environment, a trait that could be further explored in breeding programs aimed at reducing herbicide dependence.

The documentation of Sardinia’s broader botanical context underscores the value of this inventory. The island hosts 2,482 native plant species, of which 341 taxa — approximately fourteen percent — are endemic, found nowhere else. This high level of endemism has led to Sardinia being classified as a meso-hotspot of plant diversity within the broader Tyrrhenian macro-hotspot that encompasses Corsica, Sicily, the Balearic Islands, and the Tuscan Archipelago. While the segetal flora of artichoke fields is composed primarily of widespread Mediterranean species rather than narrow endemics, the agricultural landscapes of the island can serve as refugia for elements of the native flora that have been displaced from more natural habitats by land-use change. Maintaining the floristic richness of these field communities is therefore part of a wider strategy for conserving the island’s botanical heritage, one that recognizes the ecological value of traditionally managed agricultural systems as reservoirs of biodiversity in an increasingly intensively farmed Mediterranean landscape.

Future research building on this first inventory could explore several directions. Comparative studies across different cropping systems, management intensities, and landscape contexts would help identify the factors that most strongly shape segetal community composition in Sardinian agriculture. Long-term monitoring of the same fields would reveal trends in species turnover, invasion dynamics, and responses to climate variability. Functional trait analyses could clarify which plant strategies are favored under different management regimes and how these relate to ecosystem services such as pollination support or pest regulation. Seed bank studies would illuminate the reservoir of species present in the soil but not expressed in the standing vegetation, providing a more complete picture of the floristic potential of these fields. Together, such work would transform this initial inventory from a snapshot into the foundation for a deeper understanding of the ecological dynamics that sustain — or erode — the botanical diversity of one of the Mediterranean’s most iconic cropping systems.

Subject of Research: Segetal flora of globe artichoke fields in Sardinia

Article Title: The segetal flora of Cynara cardunculus L. (globe artichoke) fields in Sardinia

Article References: Lozano, V. (2025). The segetal flora of Cynara cardunculus L. (globe artichoke) fields in Sardinia. Italian Botanist, 19, 171-183. https://doi.org/10.3897/italianbotanist.19.149222

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/italianbotanist.19.149222

Keywords: segetal flora, globe artichoke, Cynara cardunculus, Sardinia, neophytes, invasive species, agroecosystems, Mediterranean flora, weed ecology, biodiversity, therophytes, archaeophytes

The scale of the effort is best captured by the numbers behind the list. The team assembled 6,821 records for the municipality, more than 95 percent of them based on direct field observations, with the remainder supported by 148 herbarium specimens and 135 photographic records. All field observations were archived in the open-access database Wikiplantbase #Italia, making the dataset freely verifiable and reusable. For the most significant taxa, herbarium specimens were prepared and deposited, and seeds of some species were stored in the seed bank of the Botanic Garden and Museum of the University of Pisa, an insurance policy against local losses.

Two species turned out to be entirely new records for the region of Calabria: Chenopodium ficifolium, a goosefoot of disturbed ground, and Orobanche cernua, a parasitic broomrape. In a country whose flora has been catalogued for centuries, finding regional novelties in a heavily farmed lowland valley underscores how much basic distributional knowledge remains incomplete even in well-studied European territories.

The inventory also carries a conservation warning. Four species documented only by historical herbarium specimens could not be rediscovered and may now be locally extinct, including Visnaga crinita, last seen in the area in 1827 and assessed as Critically Endangered (Possibly Extinct) on the Italian Red List. Euphorbia aleppica, Lotus angustissimus and Trifolium ligusticum likewise await confirmation. In total, 34 taxa recorded in Tarsia appear on the Red List of the Italian Flora: 21 as Least Concern, 8 as Data Deficient, 4 as Near Threatened, one as Vulnerable (Dracunculus vulgaris), one as Endangered (Fritillaria messanensis subsp. messanensis) and the possibly extinct Visnaga crinita.

Among the most significant finds are 17 Italian endemics, species found nowhere else in the world, including Artemisia campestris subsp. variabilis, Crocus biflorus, Daucus broteroi, Euphorbia corallioides, Euphorbia meuselii, Gypsophila arrostoi subsp. arrostoi, Micromeria consentina, Ophrys incubacea subsp. brutia, Ornithogalum exscapum, Salvia haematodes, Silene echinata, Stipa austroitalica, Thalictrum calabricum and Picris scaberrima, the last of which was originally described from the Tarsia area itself. Endemics account for 2.8 percent of the recorded flora, a modest but meaningful share for a landscape dominated by agriculture.

The statistical profile of the flora tells a clear biogeographical story. Mediterranean taxa dominate at 43 percent, followed by widely distributed species at 18.5 percent and Eurosiberian species at 15.5 percent, with about 10 percent spanning both regions. Life-form analysis shows therophytes, short-lived plants that survive unfavorable seasons as seeds, leading at 39.2 percent, followed by hemicryptophytes at 28.6 percent, geophytes at 14.7 percent, phanerophytes at 12.8 percent, chamaephytes at 3.1 percent and hydrophytes at 1.6 percent. The most species-rich families are Asteraceae with 90 taxa, Poaceae with 66 and Fabaceae with 61, while the richest genera are Trifolium with 18 taxa, Euphorbia with 10, Silene with 8, and Ophrys and Plantago with 7 each.

Notably, the established flora falls short of statistical expectations. Using Arrhenius’ species-area relationship, calibrated with coefficients derived from Italy’s floristic richness, the researchers predicted 803 species and subspecies for an area of this size, including 38 aliens. The observed totals of 618 species and 64 aliens represent a 25 percent shortfall for the established flora and an 11 percent shortfall for aliens. The authors attribute this deficit to low environmental variability and a high degree of human disturbance: spontaneous vegetation survives mainly in relict patches between olive groves, vineyards, citrus orchards and roadsides.

Alien species deserve particular scrutiny. Of the 64 non-native taxa, 21 are casual, 25 naturalized and 18 invasive. Among the invasive species, two appear on the list of invasive alien species of Union concern under European Regulation 1143/2014 and its implementing regulations: Ailanthus altissima, the tree of heaven, and Reynoutria japonica, Japanese knotweed, the latter so far known in Tarsia only in cultivation. The most frequently recorded aliens in the field were Erigeron canadensis, Arundo donax, Opuntia ficus-indica, Sorghum halepense and Robinia pseudoacacia, a familiar cast of Mediterranean and global invaders thriving on disturbance.

The most commonly observed native species paint a portrait of the working landscape: Oloptum thomasii with 162 records, Artemisia campestris subsp. variabilis with 155, wild carrot with 140, slender wild oat with 139 and sticky fleabane with 127, alongside oleander, downy oak and giant fennel. The team also noted rarities unusual for Calabria, such as Isoetes durieui, Myosurus minimus and Spirodela polyrhiza, and two coastal-affinity species, Artemisia arborescens and Atriplex halimus, growing on cliffs below the town itself, a reminder that even urban edges can harbor unexpected ecological refuges.

Perhaps the most methodologically interesting output is the Map of Relative Floristic Ignorance, computed from all 10,726 floristic records available for the province of Cosenza using a 1-kilometer grid and a 20-year temporal coefficient. The map assigns each cell an Index of Relative Floristic Ignorance, ranging from blue for well-known areas to red for poorly known ones, and reveals that the cells near the northern and south-western borders of the municipality remain the least explored. Targeted surveys there could push the documented flora closer to its expected richness and refine the conservation picture. For a landscape once dismissed as botanically unremarkable, Tarsia now offers a benchmark: a complete, openly accessible inventory showing what intensive fieldwork can recover from even the most ordinary Mediterranean farmland, and a template for closing the knowledge gaps that still riddle the floristic map of Italy.

Subject of Research: Floristic inventory of the vascular plants of Tarsia, Calabria, southern Italy

Article Title: The vascular flora of Tarsia (Calabria, southern Italy)

Article References: Peruzzi, L. (2026). The vascular flora of Tarsia (Calabria, southern Italy). Italian Botanist, 21, 35-46. https://doi.org/10.3897/italianbotanist.21.184523

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/italianbotanist.21.184523

Keywords: floristic inventory, Tarsia, Calabria, vascular flora, Italian endemics, invasive alien species, biodiversity conservation, Mediterranean flora, species-area relationship, Red List, Crati Valley, botanical survey

Neumayer was born on 11 November 1791 in Peggau, in the Austrian province of Styria, the son of Joseph Neumayer and Eva Mayer. He studied medicine in Vienna without completing his degree, an incomplete education that was nonetheless typical of an era when botanical training was acquired largely through medical study. Broadly curious, he pursued zoology, entomology, ornithology and malacology alongside botany, and drew on the collections and literature of the Imperial Museum in Vienna, where he also worked for a time. In 1825 he arrived in Dubrovnik, then known as Ragusa, as a member of an expedition led by the German entomologist Heinrich Kratter, and the region would hold him for the rest of his life.

Historical accounts of Neumayer have long been unreliable. Earlier writers recorded his given name variously as Franz or Giuseppe, and some placed his death in 1842 rather than 1840. The new research resolved these discrepancies using primary sources: the baptismal register of his home parish in Deutschfeistritz, the death register of the Dubrovnik Diocese, and probate documents from the Dubrovnik State Archive. These confirm that he died on 18 September 1840 in the village of Kuna on the Pelješac peninsula, in the house of a local man named Gašpar Ostoja, from what his death record called febbre putrida, the malarial fever he had contracted while surveying the Neretva delta’s wetlands. He was buried in the parish cemetery at Kuna.

Neumayer’s professional life was precarious. His official employment as a cadastral field surveyor for real-estate tax assessment could not support his family, so he also taught Latin and German at the Dubrovnik Gymnasium. In 1835 he married Ana Matičević from the nearby village of Čibača, and by his death the couple had six children, all still minors. The probate records show the family was left with debts of 318 florins, mostly for rent, food and clothing repairs. Neumayer’s prized natural history collection was appraised at only 95 florins, far too little to cover the outstanding sums. Dubrovnik newspapers reported that the family was left with nothing but his collection of plants, reptiles and molluscs.

Yet it was precisely this material that made Neumayer valuable to professional science. The study of one botanist collecting on behalf of another was already established in Dalmatia by the 16th century, practiced by figures such as Luigi Anguillara, first prefect of the Padua Botanical Garden, and the Swiss botanist Caspar Bauhin, whose Eastern Mediterranean expeditions helped pin down the identities of plants described by the ancient author Dioscorides. By the first half of the 19th century, the period has been called the Period of Collectors in present-day Croatia. After the Napoleonic Wars redrew the continent’s borders, the Kingdoms of Croatia and Dalmatia were unified within the Austrian Empire, whose botanical circles actively encouraged natural history research even as the region remained floristically almost unknown.

The linchpin of Neumayer’s scientific life was Roberto Visiani, a Croatian botanist of Italian descent born in Šibenik, widely regarded as the foremost specialist in Mediterranean flora of his generation. Their collaboration began in 1826, while Visiani served as a physician in Dalmatian towns including Kotor, Drniš and Budva. Neumayer became one of 23 collectors who supplied plants for Visiani’s monumental Flora Dalmatica. Visiani praised him as excellent in his work, tireless in collecting, and very knowledgeable about the flora around Dubrovnik, and annotated the folder holding Neumayer’s letters with the description: an industrious and intelligent collector of plants, shells and reptiles. Twenty letters and four appended lists survive in the archives of the Botanical Garden of the University of Padua, where the specimens Neumayer shipped over fourteen years of collaboration are preserved.

The correspondence documents a man of unusual breadth and scrupulousness. Neumayer sent numbered specimens from his own herbarium for identification because he lacked the reference literature to determine them himself, and he requested specific contemporary works by Sprengel, Persoon and Reichenbach. A contemporary noted that, despite owning only a few specialized books, he was himself a living encyclopedia, and he read in every European language except Polish and Russian. He focused primarily on phanerogams, especially the grasses (Poaceae), legumes (Fabaceae) and spurges (Euphorbiaceae), but also collected cryptogams. His collecting range was remarkable, stretching from sea-level coastal rocks to the summits of Mount Biokovo at 1,762 meters, and from Split in the northwest to Budva in the southeast, taking in the islands of Lastovo and Korčula, the Bay of Kotor, Mount Orjen and the Ottoman borderlands of Montenegro.

Fieldwork of this kind was dangerous, costly and logistically fraught. Neumayer needed permission from the governor Franz Ludwig von Welden to work in the malarial Neretva marshes, then effectively a border zone with the Ottoman Empire. He depended on local guides, lost material to careless assistants, negotiated shipments through physicians and students traveling to Padua, and watched a cholera epidemic approach the Neretva Valley during his 1836 campaign. His expenses included herbarium paper, maps, boxes, tools, guns, ammunition and clothing. When Tommasini withdrew funding after five years of support, Neumayer turned to Visiani for the twelve florins that financed his 1832 Neretva expedition. He typically refused payment for specimens, writing to Visiani that it would be selfish to accept money for his small contribution to botany, asking instead for duplicates from Visiani’s Dalmatian herbarium.

The scientific payoff was substantial. From Neumayer’s collections from Mount Orjen and elsewhere, Visiani described seven taxa new to science, including Amphoricarpos neumayeri and Avena neumayeriana, and honored his correspondent by naming four further taxa after him. Across Flora Dalmatica, Neumayer is credited as collector or sender of specimens twenty, eighteen and forty-seven times respectively in the first three volumes, and his material underpinned the description of seventeen taxa new to science in total. In total, forty-six of his specimens survive in the herbarium of Domenico Pappafava in Zadar, some still never identified to species level. His fame extended beyond botany: the Western Rock Nuthatch, Sitta neumayer, was named for him after he supplied specimens of the bird to the German zoologist Karl Wilhelm Michahelles, and a contemporary historian credited his tireless research with making almost all Dalmatian bird species known.

The study also reads Neumayer’s specimens through a modern conservation lens, and the results are sobering. Some species he collected, such as Sporobolus aculeatus and Ephedra distachya, remain rare in the Croatian flora today. Prangos ferulacea, collected in the mountains around Dubrovnik, has not been recorded in the country since his time, even though its rocky habitats have changed little. The Neretva delta, which he loved and where he eventually died, has fared worst: roughly eighty percent of its wetland habitats were lost to land reclamation by the mid-20th century, and the sundew Drosera longifolia he gathered in its marshes is now regionally extinct in Croatia. A few of his labels record apparent misidentifications that later taxonomic work has corrected. Neumayer’s story is a reminder that the foundations of modern biodiversity science rest not only on celebrated professors but on poorly paid, often forgotten local collectors whose specimens, and whose deaths in the field, made the grand floras possible.

Subject of Research: The role of amateur botanical collectors in advancing 19th-century Mediterranean floristics, focused on Joseph Martin Neumayer in Dalmatia

Article Title: The contribution of amateur botanists to the advancement of botanical science in the first half of the 19th century: The case of Joseph Martin Neumayer (1791–1840)

Article References: Marić, M., Jasprica, N., & Maslek, J. (2026). The contribution of amateur botanists to the advancement of botanical science in the first half of the 19th century: The case of Joseph Martin Neumayer (1791–1840). Italian Botanist, 21, 109-138. https://doi.org/10.3897/italianbotanist.21.183349

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/italianbotanist.21.183349

Keywords: Joseph Martin Neumayer, Roberto Visiani, Flora Dalmatica, Dalmatia, herbarium collections, botanical history, amateur naturalists, Neretva delta, malaria, plant taxonomy, Mediterranean flora, Croatian botany