Abstract
We provide and discuss a floristic survey of herbaceous and subshrubby aquatic and palustrine angiosperms of Viruá National Park (VNP). The VNP is located in the northern Amazon basin and displays phytophysiognomies distributed in a mosaic where these plants occur, as flooded forests, hydromorphic white-sand savannas, “buritizais” and waterbodies. After expeditions between February/2010 and January/2015 and the analysis of specimens from regional herbaria, we list 207 species of herbaceous and subshrubby aquatic and palustrine angiosperms for the VNP, distributed in 85 genera in 37 families. We recorded six new occurrences for Brazil, two for the northern Brazilian region and 21 for Roraima state. These new occurrences, added to the other species listed here, highlight the floristic similarity between the study site and the Guiana Shield, an adjacent phytogeographical unit and geologically related to the origin of white-sand savannas.
Highlights
Aquatic and palustrine (A&P) plants are able to survive in permanent or periodic submersion of at least their root system and share a few of the adaptations to these habitats (Sculthorpe 1967, Philbrick and Les 1996, Amaral et al 2008)
Keeping in mind the existence of vast areas of periodically or permanently inundated ecosystems in the Viruá National Park and the lack of knowledge relative to wetland plants in the region and in areas influenced by igapó rivers, we provide and discuss the floristic survey of herbaceous and subshrubby aquatic and palustrine angiosperms found there
The INPA herbarium was the only that held older specimens collected in the study area
Summary
Aquatic and palustrine (A&P) plants are able to survive in permanent or periodic submersion of at least their root system and share a few of the adaptations to these habitats (Sculthorpe 1967, Philbrick and Les 1996, Amaral et al 2008) These plants form an artificial group that includes bryophytes, ferns and angiosperms (Sculthorpe 1967, Chambers et al 2008) and contains species with pronounced phenotypic plasticity (Sculthorpe 1967) which hinder their identification. Studies on A&P plants in the Neotropics focus mainly on ecological analyses, while floristic and taxonomic analyses are sparse (Padial et al 2008, Piedade et al 2010)
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