A floristic study of Salaheddinkola Forests, Nowshahr, Iran

Abstract

This paper reports the floristic survey on the Salaheddinkola forests (Nowshahr). These forests posses high variations in elevation ranges and special physiographic properties, which form the growth platform for most of the typical Hyrcanian forest species. The floristic-physiognomic investigation of the region was performed using field-walk procedure and revealed 237 plant species belonging to 196 genera and 85 families. The important families were Asteraceae, Poaceae, Rosaceae, Lamiaceae and Fabaceae with 23, 20, 14, 13 and 10 species, respectively which represented 33.17 percent of the total species. According to Raunkaiaer method, Cryptophytes (28.7%), Hemicryptophytes (27.5%) and Phanerophytes (22.5%) were the most important structure groups of the local biological spectrum followed by Therophytes (17.7%) and Chamaephytes (3.4%) Chorotypes. According to Zohary, most of the identified species belonged to Euro-Siberian and Pluriregional regions with 79 (33.6%) and 62 (26%) taxa, respectively.