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

Mires are valuable nature conservation complexes with unique biological diversity. The presented work contains the results of studying the floristic diversity of vascular plants in protected mires in the southern part of the Sverdlovsk Region (Russia). The studies were carried out on four peat lowland plain mires: Maloe Lake, Berezovoe, Chernoe (Kamensky District) and Bagaryak (Sysertsky District). Until now, information about the floristic richness of the mires of the southern part of the Sverdlovsk Region has remained fragmentary, and therefore the study allows us to fill in the existing “gaps”. In addition, the studied mires are the southernmost mires of the Sverdlovsk Region within the Trans-Urals, which emphasizes their high environmental significance. The research was conducted in 2021. The territory of each mires was surveyed by the traditional route-reconnaissance method, taking into account the intra-mire hydrographic network. The article provides a list of discovered species of vascular plants. Author’s materials are supplemented with information from the collection of the Museum of the Institute of Plant and Animal Ecology, Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (SVER). In total, 188 species of vascular plants belonging to 123 genera, 54 families and 4 divisions were identified in the flora of the studied mires. The leading families in terms of the number of species are Cyperaceae, Asteraceae, Poaceae, Rosaceae, Orchidaceae and Salicaceae. The leading genera are Carex, Salix, Cirsium and Galium. The flora is dominated by plurizonal and boreal species with a wide distribution (Holarctic, European-West Asian and Eurasian). Among the biomorphological groups, polycarpic herbs are of significant importance (145 species, 78 %) of which 45 % are rhizomatous plants. Among the species we have discovered Malus baccata and Carduus acanthoides which are alien and appeared due to ornitho- and anemochory. In the studied mires, cenopopulations of 14 rare species listed in the Red Data Book of the Russian Federation and the Red Data Book of the Sverdlovsk Region were recorded. The work highlights the importance of maintaining mires in a natural state to maintain overall phytodiversity and the possibility of preserving rare and vulnerable plant species.