A survey of the alien vascular flora of the urban and suburban area of Thessaloniki, N Greece

Abstract

Krigas, N. & Kokkini, S.: A survey of the alien vascular flora of the urban and suburban area of Thessaloniki, N Greece. — Willdenowia 34: 81–99. — ISSN 0511-9618; © 2004 BGBM Berlin-Dahlem.In the frame of a wider research project, an inventory of 147 alien vascular plant taxa of the urban and suburban area of the city of Thessaloniki, N Greece is presented. The floristic checklist is based on extensive recent field work in 26 selected collection sites of four development sectors of the metropolitan area of the city. Each taxon recorded is given with information concerning its life-form and chorology (critically compiled as origin and current total distribution, given separately when possible), previously reported occurrence in the area, biotopes (semi-natural, anthropogenic), distribution in the investigated area and quantitative estimation of its presence per collection site. The most abundantly found taxon is Solanum elaeagnifolium, followed by Ailanthus altissima, Cynodon dactylon, Crepis sancta, Diplotaxis tenuifolia, Amaranthus retroflexus and Sporobolus indicus. The annotated checklist includes earlier reports for 62 taxa and furnishes at least 85 new records for the flora of Thessaloniki. Among them are 37 taxa not given for Greece in Flora Europaea and 16 taxa not given for Greece in the Med-Checklist.