plant diversity of five important wetlands of babol mazandaran province, iran

This study deals with the flora of five important wetlands namely Marzoonabad, Langoor, Bosra, Ramenet and Aghoozbon and their surroundings in Babol, Mazandaran province. In order to carry out a floristic survey in these wetlands, all vascular plants were collected during two growing seasons (2010-2011). We encountered 196 species belonging to 138 genera and 58 families. The largest families in the studied area were Poaceae with 24 species, Cyperaceae with 19 species, Asteraceae with 16 species, Fabaceae with 13 species and Polygonaceae with 9 species, respectively. Genera represented by the greatest number of species were Cyperus (8), Polygonum (7) and Potamogeton (4). Classification based on life form indicated that the therophytes (37%) comprised the largest proportion of the plants in the studied area. From chorological point of view, the largest proportion of the flora belonged to the pluriregional elements (54.5%). Various habitats of the wetland are discussed. Among the five wetlands of Babol, Marzoonabad had the highest number of species (111) and Langoor with 63 species placed on second. Moreover, a comparison between the data collected here and other northern Iranian wetlands has been provided which indicated some similarities and dissimilarities between different studied wetlands. According to Sørensen’s (1948) similarity index, there are less similarities between the species of the five wetlands of Babol because they have different surface area and there is no relation between them.