Abstract
Hungarian oak (Quercus frainetto) has dominant or co-dominant role in many thermophilous deciduous forest communities in the Balkan Peninsula. However, recent field research in the north-western margin of its range has revealed that some stands have a pronounced mesophilous character, which was also supported by data from the literature. This paper aims to analyze this mesophilous community of Hungarian oak which is found in north-western Serbia, north-eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H) and eastern Croatia. Numerical analysis, which included classification and ordination of all 474 available relevés of Hungarian oak forests from the western and central Balkans, along with the 43 relevés of mesophilous forests of oak-hornbeam from B&H, have shown that 83 mesophilous Hungarian oak relevés are floristically and ecologically more similar to mesophilous forests of sessile oak-hornbeam (Erythronio-Carpinion) than to xero-thermophilous forests of Qeurcion confertae. The new association Carpino betuli-Quercetum frainetto ass. nova hoc loco was described, floristically and ecologically characterized and assigned to mesophilous oak-hornbeam forests of Erythronio-Carpinion. The study also discusses the syntaxonomical issues of Quercion confertae and its central association Quercetum frainetto-cerridis, considering the problem of the lack of good diagnostic species for both syntaxa, and introduces possible ways of dealing with these issues.
Highlights
Hungarian oak (Quercus frainetto) is a subendemic south European tree species with a relatively small distribution area that is confined to central, eastern and southern Balkans from where it extends to western Anatolia, western Balkans (Bosnia and Herzegovina, hereafter B&H, Montenegro and Croatia), western Romania and eastern Hungary, with a disjunction in Italy
Cluster 2 is differentiated by the mesotermic Ligustrum vulgare and Tilia tomentosa and some humidity indicators: Ulmus minor, Hedera helix, Lonicera caprifolium, Cornus sanguinea, Euonymus europaeus, etc. which are all common in oak-hornbeam forests of the southern margin of Pannonian plane in B&H and Croatia
Despite the considerable number of described communities dominated by Hungarian oak on a relatively small distribution area of this species, until recently their syntaxonomy seemed settled inside two alliances of Quercetalia pubescenti-petraeae
Summary
Hungarian oak (Quercus frainetto) is a subendemic south European tree species with a relatively small distribution area that is confined to central, eastern and southern Balkans from where it extends to western Anatolia, western Balkans (Bosnia and Herzegovina, hereafter B&H, Montenegro and Croatia), western Romania and eastern Hungary, with a disjunction in Italy. Recent field research of these communities in the north-eastern B&H has suggested that there are mesophilous stands of Hungarian oak dominated forests that share more floristic and ecological features with mesophilous Erythronio-Carpinion than with xero-thermophilous Quercion confertae These findings were supported by the classification of the thermophilous deciduous forests of Western Balkans (Stupar et al 2016), where a fairly homogenous group of relevés, with distinct mesophilous character, traditionally assigned to Quercion confertae, i.e. Quercetum frainetto-cerridis, remained unclassified after semi-supervised classification. These were the relevés from the north-western margin of the range of Hungarian oak: eastern Croatia, north-eastern B&H and northwestern Serbia, the area with more temperate sub-oceanic
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