Dear Andriy,

I have included many garden plants in my "Flora escursionistica dell'Italia centrale" as far they are planted into the soil. Many of our students can not distinguish a cultivated species from a natural species. Therefore, I believe they should able to find introduced species in an excursion flora, to be in the grade to determine even these ones. If one makes a study on the indigenous flora, the introduced elements are left out. However, the introduced part of the flora should not be ignored, since flora is a fluid process and many species that were introduced in the past are now considered indigenous.

Dear Alfred,

Many thanks for your answer, and I completely support your opinion but I still seek for more basical background of the concept of natural flora.

And I additionally wonder what are your criteria for including selected (yes?) garden plants in Excursion Flora? What deserves to be included - Vinca in a cemetery or Vinca in a botanical garden? Should we include ephemerophytes in Excursion Flora?

I hope those details are of common interest.

With respect

Andriy

The earth could gain a "natural flora" 10.000 years after the disappearance of Homo sapiens. 10.000 years would allow to reestablish the vegetation at its climax developement. In this process, all the species that do not adapt and perfectly respond to the ecological conditions would have left the plant communities. As long as Homo sapiens disturbs the process, there is hardly any spot left on this planet that still has a vegetation that can swing in its own perfect balance. Watching it from the opposite side and including Homo sapiens in the natural concept, everything would be a "Natural flora", even the most disturbed vegetation. You have to decide from which side you want to approach the concept of a so called natural flora. That would be the definite basical background of the concept of natural flora :-) as far I can see it.

Dear Dr. Yena,

To answer this question, we should remember on the origin of the term "natural flora". It is originated from "nature"; therefore, "natural" flora should include all species independently of they are permanently occurring in this area or they are ephemeral elements of flora, because ephemerophytes (=casual plants) are also a part of nature and, consequently, natural flora. But frequently researchers confuse "natural flora" and "native flora". The second one include indigenous (= resident, native) species, which are in contract to alien species, among which are ephemerophytes (=casual alien plants according to publications of David Richardson and Petr Pysek). That is why I would agree with Dr. Mayer that ephemorphytes should not be excluded from natural flora.

Best regards, Anatoliy

In order to define the meaning of the term, it is sometimes necessary to define the meaning of the opposite term, e.g., "unnatural flora", "artificial flora". When the meaning of this term is clear, you will know what a natural flora is. Another important question is whether this term is necessary? In my opinion, it is superfluous. The term "flora" covers all species occurring in certain territory!

Dear Andriy,

I prefer the expression wild flora and not natural flora. Then, in the area of ​​wild flora (province, region, territory, type of vegetaion, wood vegetation ...), you can find species as cultivated that have become naturalized or also alien species. In the floristic list abitually I report, in addition to wild species, the cultivated species noting that is cultivated and has escaped the harvest or if its presence is repeated also elsewhere in other natural places it means that a process of spontaneization is underway which must be indicated. The same goes for the alien species where for example in Italy there is a very clear checklist by Galasso et al. 2018. These are generally sporadic cases, unfortunately the dynamics and the fluctuations cannot be controlled by man as they depend on a climatic and genetic factors.

Field botanists, like my colleagues, usually do not indicate the cultivated species except with the indications indicated above.

Furthermore, there are situations in which the species is both cultivated and wild, for example Ficus carica, Celtis australis, Pinus halepensis and in this case to say if it is wild or cultivated plant you must know the local flora and its history.

I hope I gave you some good indication about your question