Abstract
UDK: 581.5(497.6)
 The beginnings of vegetation research of Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H), according to Braun-Blanquet’s approach, date back to early 1930s, culminated in the period of 60s-70s, and declined until the end of 20th century. Twenty years after the war B&H vegetation science hasn’t still achieved the pre-war level.
 The starting point for the preparation of the checklist of vegetation classes was the vegetation database of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which contains 6823 relevés, which were digitized and imported in TURBOVEG database for storage of large relevé datasets. Total of 4780 relevés were collected from 123 references (2906 regularly published, 1331 from grey literature and 543 from manuscripts), while 2043 are unpublished relevés, mainly recorded by the team of the Department of Forest Ecology at the Faculty of Forestry in Banja Luka.
 Analysis of this dataset suggests that vegetation of Bosnia and Herzegovina comprises 60 classes. According to the overviews of vegetation of Bosnia and Herzegovina published so far, the vegetation dominated by vascular plants numbers 33 and 39 classes respectively. This discrepancy can be partially attributed to different syntaxonomic concepts used in these overviews compared to the latest Checklist compiled at the European level (EuroVegChecklist), which was our guideline, but also to uneven level of elaboration of different vegetation types and geographical regions in B&H.
 Six classes of forest vegetation share almost 60% of the total number of relevés, while another six classes of various grasslands take another 25%. The other 15% is divided among the rest of 48 classes.
 Some of the classes without relevés are, in our own opinion, present in B&H, but still need to be confirmed, while the others, even though mentioned in literature, couldn’t be confirmed at the field after extensive research.
Highlights
The beginnings of vegetation research of Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H), according to Braun-Blanquet’s approach, date back to early 1930s, culminated in the period of 60s-70s, and declined until the end of 20th century
Our results suggest that the vegetation of B&H consists of 60 classes (Table 1, Appendix)
This number is higher compared to most European countries (Jiménez-Alfaro et al, 2014) which is related to high floristic, macroclimatic, geological and geomorphological diversity of B&H (Redžić, 2012)
Summary
Our results suggest that the vegetation of B&H consists of 60 classes (Table 1, Appendix) This number is higher compared to most European countries (Jiménez-Alfaro et al, 2014) which is related to high floristic, macroclimatic, geological and geomorphological diversity of B&H (Redžić, 2012). This puts B&H in line with other countries with high vegetation diversity that are divided by two biogeographical regions (Eurosiberian and Mediterranean) such as Italy, France, Spain and Croatia. From the countries in the region, only Macedonia, Montenegro and Albania have less relevés recorded This checklist comprises 27 classes more than noted by Lakušić et al (1978) and 21 more than listed by Barudanović et al (2015). On the other hand, four classes have been merged into Molinio-Arrhenatheretea, while Festuco-Brometea and Papaveretea rhoeadis consist of two formerly independent classes
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