Abstract
The vast majority of floristical and coenological studies focus on the natural vegetation and its remnants in urban environments; however, there is an increasing interest in the systematic exploration of built environments. This survey of the inhabited areas of Budapest launched in 2018 applied a new and detailed methodology. The territorial units of the survey were street sections, where the presence of vascular plants was recorded in ecologically different habitats separately. We laid down the foundations to establish new habitat categories for the habitat classification and mapping of urban ecosystems using a different approach than the Hungarian habitat classification system (ÁNÉR). The method enables us to study the flora of urban ecosystems in detail. We established 18 urban habitat categories, surveyed more than 27,000 survey units and registered 647 spontaneously growing plant species in Budapest. Our survey evinced the spontaneous occurrence of 193 alien species in Budapest, 81 of them are data deficient, while 10 of them are new introductions in Hungary. 53.9% of the aliens are cultivated frequently in Hungary.
Highlights
The invasion of plants is a major problem of recent biology, having serious negative impacts on natural habitats and human health (Early et al 2016; Mazza et al 2014; Rumlerová et al 2016)
Urban hedges, cracks and flower boxes occurred in all groups, so these habitats are treated as overlapping subcategories (Table 1)
The highest number of taxa were found in road verges, cracks and amenity grasslands, but regarding the single survey units, the most species-rich unit was an amenity grassland at Laczkovich street (Budapest District IX), with 96 species, while the average species number was highest in road slopes, ruderals and along railways and lowest in urban hedges (Fig. 3)
Summary
The invasion of plants is a major problem of recent biology, having serious negative impacts on natural habitats and human health (Early et al 2016; Mazza et al 2014; Rumlerová et al 2016). The extent of urbanisation nowadays is larger than ever in our history, more than half of the human population lives in cities and the ratio of urban population is expected to grow even more in the decades (United Nations 2019). Because of these facts, Urban ecosystems differ from natural and semi-natural habitats in many ways.
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