Flora of Village Excavated Ponds in the Northwest of Yaroslavl Oblast

Abstract

Excavated ponds are a group of widely distributed small artificial water bodies in the territory of Central Russia. In the countryside, they play an important role as water storage for the irrigation of vegetable gardens, livestock watering, the cultivation of waterfowl, and fire water ponds. In 1998–2014, 49 village excavated ponds located in the northwestern part of Yaroslavl oblast were studied. The inventory of the flora of village ponds revealed 161 species of vascular plants from 44 plant families and 88 genera. The dominant plant families in the flora of such water bodies are Poaceae, Cyperaceae, Asteraceae, Polygonaceae, and Salicaceae; the dominant genera are Carex, Salix, Bidens. The ecotypes of hygrophytes and hygromeso- and mesophytes prevail in the ecological structure of the studied flora. Boreal and plurizonal species are dominant in the geographical structure, and Holarctic and Eurasian species prevail in the regional one. The abundance of plurizonal species among typically aquatic vascular plants, due to a relatively high consistency of the aquatic environment when compared to terrestrial ecosystems, makes flora of village ponds similar to that of other water bodies in the studied area. At the same time, the results of long-term studies make it possible to distinguish such features of flora of these small artificial reservoirs as a large number of occasional plant species not typical for water bodies and extremely high dynamics of their flora in different growing seasons.