What is flora definition briefly. What is flora? Flora analysis methods

Traditionally, the term “flora” (“microflora”) is also used to describe a set of microorganisms characteristic of a specific human or animal organ (for example, “intestinal flora”, “microflora of human skin”).

Origin of the term

The name of the term comes from the name of the ancient Roman goddess of flowers and spring blossoms, Flora (lat. Flora).

The word "flora" in the meaning of "collection of plants" was first used by the Polish botanist Michal Boym (1614-1659) in his work Flora sinensis(“Flora of China”), published in Vienna in 1656.

The second time the word "flora" was used in this meaning was by the great Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778) in his work Flora Lapponica("Flora of Lapland"), published in Amsterdam in 1737. It was this book that became the first in the genre of “flora” in its modern sense - that is, in the genre of a review work devoted to the flora of a particular territory. Flora Lapponica provides an overview of the flora of Lapland and contains detailed description 534 species of plants and fungi, of which about a hundred were described for the first time. The principle of construction of this book (introductory chapters with information about the area described and the history of studying its nature; a section with a description of plant species, including, for each species, information about its morphology, growth characteristics, taxonomic data and brief information about the use of the plant; at the end of the book there is a list of references) turned out to be compositionally perfect and began to be used in other similar works.

Flora analysis methods

• geographical analysis - division of flora by geographical distribution; identification of the proportion of endemics;
• genetic analysis (from ancient Greek. γένεσις - “origin, occurrence”) - division of flora according to the criteria of geographical origin and history of settlement;
• botanical-geographical analysis - establishing connections between a given flora and other floras;
• ecological and phytocenological analysis - division of flora according to growing conditions, according to types of vegetation;
• age analysis - division of flora into progressive (young in time of appearance), conservative and relict elements;
• systematic structure analysis - comparative analysis quantitative and qualitative characteristics of various systematic groups that make up a given flora.

All methods of flora analysis are based on its preliminary inventory, that is, the identification of its species and generic composition.

Flora typification

Flora of specialized groups

Different authors use different criteria for classifying plants as adventitious flora: in in the narrow sense it includes unstable and random components of the flora, that is, those whose naturalization process is not completed; V in a broad sense adventive flora includes all plants that appeared in a given area after people settled here, including naturalized plants - that is, those that managed to acclimatize in the area in question and take a strong position in the local vegetation cover. In some areas, adventitious (alien) plants occupy a significant and sometimes dominant position, sometimes preventing the reproduction of some native plants. Examples of such situations include wide use prickly pears in Australia, Southern Europe and the countries of the Middle East, as well as the active spread of asteraceae, European in origin, in the Argentine pampa. Some weeds have spread widely throughout countries around the world with developed agriculture, clogging crops.

Types of flora according to Krasnov

In 1888, in his work “An Experience in the History of the Development of the Flora of the Southern Part of the Eastern Tien Shan” Russian botanist Andrei Nikolaevich Krasnov (1862-1914/1915) proposed the following division of floras of territories into parts:

F = ƒ 1 + ƒ 2 + ƒ 3 ;

A flora for which F is close to ƒ 2 is called transformational. This flora is typical, for example, of Central Asia.

A flora for which F is close to ƒ 3 is called migration. This flora is characteristic of Western Europe.

Flora by use criteria

To denote a set of cultivated plants grown in a certain area, the expression “cultivated flora” is used.

Sometimes the expression “health flora” is also found - a metaphor used to designate a set of species of medicinal plants distributed in a certain area or on Earth as a whole.

Floristic zoning

...There is a flora of glacial and steppe, arctic, Pontic, Mediterranean, subtropical, marsh, etc., etc. ...The station flora is distinguished by exceptionally abundant and bright flowering. ...The railway flora... consists mainly of elecampane, antirrinum, mullein, navel, lungwort, Virgin grass and some other railway species. ...A special botanical class is the cemetery flora...
...The riches of the world are inexhaustible: every craft - what am I saying - every Political Party could have its own flora.

Comparative analysis of floras of different territories is the basis for floristic zoning globe, that is, the creation of a “floristic system” - a system of dividing the globe into natural floristic units.

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Notes

1. Komarov V. L.// Flora of the USSR: in 30 volumes / ch. ed. V. L. Komarov. - M.-L. : Publishing House of the USSR Academy of Sciences, 1934. - T. I / ed. volumes M. M. Ilyin. - P. 1-12. - 302 + XVI pp. - 5000 copies.
2. Bobrov E. G.. - L.: Nauka, 1970. - P. 72-73. - 285 s. - 7000 copies.
3. Alien plants // Payment - Prob. - M. : Soviet Encyclopedia, 1975. - (Great Soviet Encyclopedia: [in 30 volumes] / chief ed. A. M. Prokhorov; 1969-1978, vol. 20).
4. Strizhev A. Pharmacy in the garden // Gifts of nature / V. A. Soloukhin, L. V. Garibova, A. D. Turova and others / comp. S. L. Oshanin. - M.: Economics, 1984. - P. 90-93. - 304 s. - 100,000 copies.

Literature

	Portal "Botany"
	Flora in Wiktionary
	Flora in Wikiquote

• Flora (the totality of plant species) / A. I. Tolmachev // Ulyanovsk - Frankfort. - M. : Soviet Encyclopedia, 1977. - (Great Soviet Encyclopedia: [in 30 volumes] / chief ed. A. M. Prokhorov; 1969-1978, vol. 27).
• Mayorov S. R. et al. Adventive flora of Moscow and the Moscow region. - M. : Partnership scientific publications KMK, 2012. - 412 p. - 200 copies. - ISBN 978-5-87317-880-3.
• Markelova, N. R. Dynamics of the composition and structure of the adventive flora of the Tver region: 03.00.05: dis. ...cand. biol. Sci. - M., 2004. - Ch. 1: Basic approaches to the analysis of adventive flora.
• Takhtadzhyan A. L. Floristic division of land and ocean // Life of plants: in 6 volumes - M. : Education, 1974. - T. 1: Introduction. Bacteria and actinomycetes / ed. N. A. Krasilnikova and A. A. Uranova. - pp. 117-153.

Links

• // Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron
• Beketov A. N.// Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron: in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - St. Petersburg. , 1890-1907.

Excerpt characterizing Flora

There was no new order from the French authorities about the party of prisoners in which Pierre was, during his entire movement from Moscow. This party on October 22 was no longer with the same troops and convoys with which it left Moscow. Half of the convoy with breadcrumbs, which followed them during the first marches, was repulsed by the Cossacks, the other half went ahead; there were no more foot cavalrymen who walked in front; they all disappeared. The artillery, which had been visible ahead during the first marches, was now replaced by a huge convoy of Marshal Junot, escorted by the Westphalians. Behind the prisoners was a convoy of cavalry equipment.
From Vyazma French troops, who had previously marched in three columns, now walked in one heap. Those signs of disorder that Pierre noticed at the first stop from Moscow have now reached the last degree.
The road along which they walked was littered with dead horses on both sides; ragged people, lagging behind different teams, constantly changing, they either joined, then again lagged behind the marching column.
Several times during the campaign there were false alarms, and the soldiers of the convoy raised their guns, shot and ran headlong, crushing each other, but then they gathered again and scolded each other for their vain fear.
These three gatherings, marching together - the cavalry depot, the prisoner depot and Junot's train - still formed something separate and integral, although both of them, and the third, were quickly melting away.
The depot, which had initially contained one hundred and twenty carts, now had no more than sixty left; the rest were repulsed or abandoned. Several carts from Junot's convoy were also abandoned and recaptured. Three carts were plundered by the backward soldiers from Davout's corps who came running. From conversations of the Germans, Pierre heard that this convoy was put on guard more than the prisoners, and that one of their comrades, a German soldier, was shot on the orders of the marshal himself because a silver spoon that belonged to the marshal was found on the soldier.
Of these three gatherings, the prisoner depot melted the most. Of the three hundred and thirty people who left Moscow, there were now less than a hundred left. The prisoners were even more of a burden to the escorting soldiers than the saddles of the cavalry depot and Junot's baggage train. Junot’s saddles and spoons, they understood that they could be useful for something, but why did the hungry and cold soldiers of the convoy stand guard and guard the same cold and hungry Russians who were dying and lagged behind on the road, whom they were ordered to shoot? not only incomprehensible, but also disgusting. And the guards, as if afraid in the sad situation in which they themselves were, not to give in to their feeling of pity for the prisoners and thereby worsen their situation, treated them especially gloomily and strictly.
In Dorogobuzh, while the convoy soldiers, having locked the prisoners in a stable, went off to rob their own stores, several captured soldiers dug under the wall and ran away, but were captured by the French and shot.
The previous order, introduced upon leaving Moscow, for captured officers to march separately from the soldiers, had long been destroyed; all those who could walk walked together, and Pierre, from the third transition, had already united again with Karataev and the lilac bow-legged dog, which had chosen Karataev as its owner.
Karataev, on the third day of leaving Moscow, developed the same fever from which he was lying in the Moscow hospital, and as Karataev weakened, Pierre moved away from him. Pierre didn’t know why, but since Karataev began to weaken, Pierre had to make an effort on himself to approach him. And approaching him and listening to those quiet moans with which Karataev usually lay down at rest, and feeling the now intensified smell that Karataev emitted from himself, Pierre moved away from him and did not think about him.
In captivity, in a booth, Pierre learned not with his mind, but with his whole being, with his life, that man was created for happiness, that happiness is in himself, in the satisfaction of natural human needs, and that all misfortune comes not from lack, but from excess; but now, in these last three weeks of the campaign, he learned another new, comforting truth - he learned that there is nothing terrible in the world. He learned that just as there is no situation in which a person would be happy and completely free, there is also no situation in which he would be unhappy and not free. He learned that there is a limit to suffering and a limit to freedom, and that this limit is very close; that the man who suffered because one leaf was wrapped in his pink bed suffered in the same way as he suffered now, falling asleep on the bare, damp earth, cooling one side and warming the other; that when he used to put on his narrow ballroom shoes, he suffered in exactly the same way as now, when he walked completely barefoot (his shoes had long since become disheveled), with feet covered with sores. He learned that when, as it seemed to him, he had married his wife of his own free will, he was no more free than now, when he was locked in the stable at night. Of all the things that he later called suffering, but which he hardly felt then, the main thing was his bare, worn, scabby feet. (Horse meat was tasty and nutritious, the saltpeter bouquet of gunpowder, used instead of salt, was even pleasant, there was not much cold, and during the day it was always hot while walking, and at night there were fires; the lice that ate the body warmed pleasantly.) One thing was hard. at first it’s the legs.
On the second day of the march, after examining his sores by the fire, Pierre thought it impossible to step on them; but when everyone got up, he walked with a limp, and then, when he warmed up, he walked without pain, although in the evening it was even worse to look at his legs. But he did not look at them and thought about something else.
Now only Pierre understood the full power of human vitality and the saving power of moving attention invested in a person, similar to that saving valve in steam engines that releases excess steam as soon as its density exceeds a known norm.
He did not see or hear how the backward prisoners were shot, although more than a hundred of them had already died in this way. He did not think about Karataev, who was weakening every day and, obviously, was soon to suffer the same fate. Pierre thought even less about himself. The more difficult his situation became, the more terrible the future was, the more, regardless of the situation in which he was, joyful and soothing thoughts, memories and ideas came to him.

On the 22nd, at noon, Pierre was walking uphill along a dirty, slippery road, looking at his feet and at the unevenness of the path. From time to time he glanced at the familiar crowd surrounding him, and again at his feet. Both were equally his own and familiar to him. The lilac, bow-legged Gray ran merrily along the side of the road, occasionally, as proof of his agility and contentment, tucking his hind paw and jumping on three and then again on all four, rushing and barking at the crows that were sitting on the carrion. Gray was more fun and smoother than in Moscow. On all sides lay the meat of various animals - from human to horse, in various degrees decomposition; and the wolves were kept away by the walking people, so Gray could eat as much as he wanted.
It had been raining since the morning, and it seemed that it would pass and clear the sky, but after a short stop the rain began to fall even more heavily. The rain-saturated road no longer absorbed water, and streams flowed along the ruts.
Pierre walked, looking around, counting steps in threes, and counting on his fingers. Turning to the rain, he internally said: come on, come on, give it more, give it more.
It seemed to him that he was not thinking about anything; but far and deep somewhere his soul thought something important and comforting. This was something of a subtle spiritual extract from his conversation with Karataev yesterday.
Yesterday, at a night halt, chilled by the extinguished fire, Pierre stood up and moved to the nearest, better-burning fire. By the fire, to which he approached, Plato was sitting, covering his head with an overcoat like a chasuble, and telling the soldiers in his argumentative, pleasant, but weak, painful voice a story familiar to Pierre. It was already past midnight. This was the time at which Karataev usually recovered from a feverish attack and was especially animated. Approaching the fire and hearing Plato’s weak, painful voice and seeing his pitiful face brightly illuminated by the fire, something unpleasantly pricked Pierre’s heart. He was frightened by his pity for this man and wanted to leave, but there was no other fire, and Pierre, trying not to look at Plato, sat down near the fire.