Bryophyte flora of selected historical parks and gardens of Slovakia

Abstract

In a cultural landscape, old historical parks feature important biodiversity refuges not only for vascular plants but also for bryophytes. Here, we surveyed a total of 14 historical parks and gardens in urban and rural areas of Slovakia to evaluate their bryophyte diversity and to find out possible correlations between species richness and habitat characteristics. Overall, 104 bryophyte species (12 liverworts and 92 mosses) were identified. Most frequently occurring species were Amblystegium serpens, Brachythecium rutabulum, Bryum argenteum and Tortula muralis, present at all studied sites. Generally, small urban parks hosted less bryophyte species compared to rural areas. In terms of substrate preference, most frequent were epigeic species, followed by epilithic, epiphytic and epixylic species. At most sites, species’ indicator values showed a dominance of semi-heliophilous, semi-heliophobic, hygrophilous, weakly acidophilous to basiphilous bryophyte taxa. Spearman rank correlation test showed that the species richness correlated with the park location (urban vs. rural area) and the number of settlement inhabitants showing that green areas in urban landscape are more isolated from each other which decreased species richness. Our results show that old parks and gardens can provide suitable habitats for some rare species such as Osculatia bornholmensis (reported recently as new for Slovakia) but even for common forest and meadow species and the study of their diversity should be given an increased attention.