Home – Home – Jornals – Flora and Vegetation of Asian Russia 2022 number 4

Floras of mountain territories are of interest due to their species richness, high level of endemism and a large number of rare species. Mountain ranges situated near geographical boundaries deserve special attention, because their floras are characterized by high diversity due to species of different altitudinal vegetation belts, up to the nival one, as well as due to species intrinsic to different geographical units. The Tsagan-Shibetu Range is one of such ranges. Its Russian part is situated between mountains of the South-Eastern Altai, the Mongun-Taiga Massif and the Tannu-Ola Range. Together with the latter the Tsagan-Shibetu Range delineates the world watershed between the Arctic Ocean basin and the drainless region of the Central Asia. The purpose of this work was to compile a checklist of the flora of the Tsagan-Shibetu Range, to reveal protected species of the flora and species that were not previously indicated for the nature regions of Tuva, to which the territory of the range belongs. To compile the checklist, data from the author’s expeditions in 2004, 2005, 2007, 2011 and 2019 were used (2431 field records and 868 herbarium samples), as well as the herbarium by other botanists collected on the Tsagan-Shibetu Range in 1947-1993 and stored in the Herbarium of the Central Siberian Botanical Garden (NS) (more than 2300 herbarium samples). Electronic databases of field records and herbarium specimen metadata were created by the author in MS Access. They were used in compiling the checklist for obtaining information on the distribution and ecological features of species. The flora of the Russian part of the Tsagan-Shibetu Range comprises 878 species and subspecies of vascular plants, which belong to 300 genera and 70 families. The 10 biggest families are Asteraceae (113 species and subspecies), Poaceae (101), Fabaceae (63), Ranunculaceae (51), Rosaceae (50), Caryophyllaceae (44), Brassicaceae (44), Cyperaceae (41), Scrophulariaceae (35) and Lamiaceae (29). All the ten biggest families are the same as the biggest families of the Boreal Region. The family Fabaceae is one of the three biggest families of the flora, what is peculiar for the Turan floras in the Middle Asia and the flora of Mongolia in the Central Asia. At the same time, these floras are characterized by a large number of species of the family Chenopodiaceae, while in the flora of the Russian part of the Tsagan-Shibetu Range this family is represented by only 15 species and is not among the biggest. These facts demonstrate the borderline nature of the flora of the Russian part of the Tsagan-Shibetu Range which, due to location of the range on the world watershed, shows features of both North Asian and Central Asian floras. Twenty three species of the flora are under state or regional protection and are included into the Red Data Book of the Russian Federation (2008) and/or the Red Data Book of the Tyva Republic (2019) as rare or reducing in number: Aconitum decipiens Worosch. et Anfalov, Allium altaicum Pall., A. pumilum Vved., A. tuvinicum (N. Friesen) N. Friesen, Anoplocaryum turczaninovii Krasnob., Aphragmus involucratus (Bunge) O.E. Schulz, Asterothamnus heteropappoides Novopokr., A. poliifolius Novopokr., Chenopodium frutescens C.A. Mey., Delphinium barlykense Lomon. et Khanm., Euphorbia potaninii Prokh., Microstigma deflexum (Bunge) Juz., Oxytropis acanthacea Jurtzev, O. martjanovii Krylov, O. physocarpa Ledeb., O. trichophysa Bunge, O. tschujae Bunge, Potentilla astragalifolia Bunge, Ranunculus tuvinicus A. Erst, Rheum altaicum Losinsk., Stipa pennata L., Taphrospermum altaicum C.A. Mey., Veronica reverdattoi Krasnob.