Flora and vegetation of Albania
The flora and vegetation of Albania is currently (2017) given as around 3550 species of wild vascular plants . This means that Albania has a significantly greater biodiversity than Switzerland, which is a third more extensive and has 3,113 species. This difference becomes even greater if one excludes the plants that were naturalized in modern times ( neophytes ), of which much more have been found in Switzerland than in Albania.
geology
The main reason for this high biodiversity in Albania is the low level of glaciation during the Würm and Saale Ice Ages , which did not include the mountainous relief of Albania, so that the biodiversity has been able to develop relatively undisturbed for at least 115,000 years. Another important influencing factor was the high proportion of serpentine soils with their very independent and endemic flora.
Endemism
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Due to its small land area, Albania has comparatively few real endemics . However, 59 species are extremely locally distributed and a further 264 species belong to the group of Balkan endemics with small total areas of less than 500 kilometers in diameter. The main places where these endemics grow are open, (semi) natural communities such as high mountains, cliffs, narrow gorges or open grasslands and Phrygana . Such locations above serpentine soils are particularly rich in endemics. Particularly strongly isolated paleo-endemics such as Halacsya sendtneri and Paramoltkia doerfleri (two monotypical Boraginaceae genera), Campanula hawkinsiana , Centaurea kosaninii , Centaurea vlachorum , Forsythia europaea and Sanguisorba albanica also grow systematically here .
flora
The species-richest genus of the Albanian flora is Trifolium ( clover ) with 63 species, which is 125% more than in Switzerland (28 species). This is mainly a result of the dry summer Mediterranean climate in the coastal areas, because 63% of the Albanian species of clover are short-lived spring to early summer bloomers. Albania is also home to nearly three times as many mullein TYPES ( Verbascum ) than Switzerland (27 against ten), reflecting the greater proximity to Anatolia , the main development center of mullein, back.
vegetation
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The parts of Albania facing the Adriatic are among the wettest parts of Europe. Shkodra in northern Albania receives 1800 mm of annual precipitation, although it is almost at sea level. For the Albanian Alps (Prokletje) at least 2400 mm annual precipitation is assumed. The Mediterranean character of the country increases significantly from north to south. Shkodra on the border with Montenegro only has one dry summer month and is therefore still in the humid Mediterranean climate area of the Dalmatian coast . Saranda, located in the southern coastal area of Albania, on the other hand, already has three extremely dry summer months, as is typical for the typical Mediterranean climate of the Ionian coastal area . In the eastern parts of the country, the annual rainfall is significantly less, but the summer drought also decreases, and there is a sub-Mediterranean, almost central European climate there in lower elevations. The fertile parts of the coastal plains are consistently covered by agricultural land. A partially evergreen macchia- like secondary vegetation with strawberry tree ( Arbutus unedo ), tree heather ( Erica arborea ), terebinth ( Pistacia terebinthus ), wig bush ( Cotinus coggygria ), downy oak ( Quercus pubescens ) etc. thrives on dry hills initially deciduous oak forests with Turkey oak ( Quercus cerris ), Hungarian oak ( Quercus frainetto ), Macedonian oak ( Quercus macedonica ), English oak ( Quercus robur ), hop beech ( Ostrya carpinifolia ) or hornbeam ( Carpinus betolus ). Above it is a beech forest belt ( Fagus sylvatica ), in the damp north with a lower limit of only 400 meters in places, in the drier south from 600–1000 meters. Here the beech stage changes to a more drought-resistant beech-fir stage with Bulgarian fir ( Abies borisii-regiis ), which then ultimately mutates in Greece into a pure fir stage with Greek fir ( Abies cephalonica ). Significantly different is the vegetation over serpentine with black pine ( Pinus nigra ) on the particularly shallow soils and Rumelian pine ( Pinus peuce ) together with the beech in the subalpine area.
The high mountain vegetation of the Albanian Alps is still very reminiscent of the southeastern Alps with Scots pines ( Pinus mugo ) and an overall rather soft-leaved, moisture-loving vegetation. The Carinthian wulfenia ( Wulfenia carinthiaca ) occurs only here and in a single particularly humid place in the Carnic Alps ( Gartnerkofel ) . The high mountain vegetation of southern Albania, on the other hand, is already much more Mediterranean in color, which is reflected in the more frequent occurrence of thistles (e.g. Carduus tmoleus , Morina persica ) and thorny tragacanth species ( astragalus ).
literature
- Gerhard Pils : Illustrated Flora of Albania . Eigenverlag, 2016, ISBN 978-3-200-04853-9 ( Book Description ).
- Friedrich Markgraf : Plants from Albania 1928 . In: Memoranda of the Academy of Sciences in Vienna . Vienna 1931, p. 317-360 ( PDF ).
- Friedrich Markgraf: Plant geography of Albania: its importance for vegetation and flora of the Mediterranean countries . Swiss beard, Stuttgart 1932.
