Current Vegetation of the Czech Republic

Abstract

The Czech Republic, a country in the heart of Europe, has a long tradition of botani- cal research. More than two centuries of systematic studies on its flora and almost a century of vegetation research have resulted in a wealth of detailed botanical infor- mation. This country is perhaps the only one in the world for which detailed multi- volume monographs of both of its flora (the last, ninth volume is under preparation) and vegetation (in four volumes) have recently been published. There are also large databases of records of plant distribution and vegetation plots, which are frequently used in basic and applied research. Despite the existence of extensive botanical information, until quite recently general descriptions of the main patterns in this country’s flora and vegetation were available only in Czech, mainly in the introductory chapters of botanical mono- graphs. On the occasion of the centenary of the Czech Botanical Society in 2012, the society published a special issue of its journal Preslia that contained new check- lists and Red Lists of the vascular plant flora and bryoflora of this country (Danihelka et al. 2012; Grulich 2012; Kučera et al. 2012) and review articles dealing with the history of botanical research (Krahulec 2012), general information about vegetation (Chytrý 2012), flora (Kaplan 2012), plant invasions (Pyšek et al. 2012) and basic overviews of bryoflora (Kučera et al. 2012) and lichen biota (Liška 2012). As these review articles were well received by botanists both within this country and interna- tionally, we decided to use some of them as a basis for developing a reference book that would summarize the botanical information about the Czech Republic mainly for an international readership. The current book focuses on the Czech flora, including the alien flora, bryoflora and lichen biota, and vegetation, including the history of the vegetation since the last glacial. It also deals with the history of botanical research and conservation of plant diversity in this country. The chapters on vascular flora (Chapter 3), bryoflora (Chapter 4), vegetation (Chapter 7) and plant invasions (Chapter 8) are based on considerably modified, updated and extended papers published in the 2012 special issue of Preslia. Chapters on the history of botanical research (Chapter 2), lichen biota (Chapter 5), vegetation history since the late Pleistocene (Chapter 6) and con- servation of botanical diversity (Chapter 9) are entirely new. The chapter on this country’s physical geography (Chapter 1), which provides basic information neces- sary for understanding botanical diversity in an environmental context, uses some materials originally included in the first part of the Preslia review paper on vegeta- tion; however, also these materials have been considerably extended and revised. This book is a publication of the Centre of Excellence Pladias (Plant Diversity Analysis and Synthesis), funded by a grant from the Czech Science Foundation in the years 2014–2018 (project no. 14-36079G). This centre includes the Department of Botany and Zoology of Masaryk University, Brno, Institute of Botany of The Czech Academy of Sciences and Department of Botany of the University of South Bohemia, České Budějovice. The Pladias researchers have created and critically revised extensive data sets on this country’s flora and vegetation and integrated them in the Pladias database, which is now being used for various syntheses, research and applications. Some of the information presented in this book is based on data from this new database. Another of the results of the Pladias project is a new field flora, Key to the Flora of the Czech Republic (Kaplan et al. 2017), the manuscript of which was prepared shortly before the manuscript of this book. This field flora is used as the source of the nomenclature of the vascular plants throughout this book. The nomenclature of bryophytes follows Kučera et al. (2012) and that of lichens follows Liška et al. (2008). We thank colleagues who helped us with the preparation of this book. Apart from the contributors to the Pladias database and authors of individual chapters, it was mainly Ondřej Hájek, who prepared nearly all the maps used in this book; Kryštof Chytrý, who prepared the plates with photographs and R scripts for some graphs; Pavel Dřevojan and Zuzana Sixtová, who checked references; authors of photo- graphs, listed in the captions; Tony Dixon, who proofread the English texts; Martin Kočí, who prepared Index; and Irena Axmanová, who helped us with final proof- reading. Various data were kindly provided by the Nature Conservation Agency of the Czech Republic. Special thanks go to Marinus Werger, the editor of the Springer book series Plant and Vegetation, for conceptual advice on the content of this book and specific comments on individual chapters. We hope that this book will become a useful source of information for the inter- national and national community of botanists, bryologists, lichenologists, palaeo- ecologists, vegetation scientists, invasion ecologists and conservationists, including those doing research in the Czech Republic, travelling to this country for excur- sions, or those who are searching for a reference on specific topics related to Central European plant diversity.