Abstract

The Downy Oak (Quercus pubescens s.l.) in Italy is a quite common tree species.Although its occurrence in all the Italian administrative regions, and a potential rolefor forming zonal forest throughout the whole Italian Peninsula it is not easy to findQ. pubescens woods covering wide areas or exhibiting a sufficiently high cover degreeof the dominant tree layer to not be considered a wooded grassland or shrubland.In fact, the Quercus pubescens woods find their coenological optimum within the southfacing slopes of the colline and submontane belts where the millenary traditional agricultural land-use practices were carried out by the Italic populations. From a taxonomicalpoint of view the pubescent-oaks are a still open issue. A wide degree of hybridizationcharacterized all the species of white oaks occurring in Italy and hybrids exist evenbetween those oak species seemingly showing very different ecological features(Q. pubescens, Q. robur, Q. frainetto, Q. petraea). Nonetheless, in addition to Quercuspubescens, the Italian taxonomical and phytosociological literature (especially thatconcerning the southern Italy) reports a wide range of other pubescent-oak names,some of them of still uncertain taxonomical status (e.g. Q. virgiliana, Q. dalechampii,Q. leptobalana, Q. apennina, Q. amplifolia, Q. humilis, Q. congesta, Q. ichnusae) whichwere widely used as guide species for phytosociological associations or even for the higher rank syntaxa. Owing to the wide ecological amplitude of Quercus pubescens s.l., bothin terms of bioclimate and bedrock type, the classification of its woods at the class rankis also a highly debated issue. According to some authors (e.g. Brullo & Marcenò 1985;Brullo et al. 2009), the most of the southern Italy pubescent-oak forests are not to be referred to Quercus pubescens s.s. but to other pubescent-oak taxa (especially Q. virgilianaand Q. dalechampii) having a strictly steno-Mediterranean distribution and ecologicalfeatures pertinent to the Thermo-Mediterranean and Meso-Mediterranean thermotypes. Accordingly their forests were classified within the Quercetea ilicis whereasthe pubescent-oak associations occurring in the temperate zones of the Italian peninsulawere included in the Querco-Fagetea. Other authors (e.g. Blasi et al. 2004) disagreedwith this position and considered all the pubescent-oak s.l. associations as belongingto Quercus-Fagetea by virtue of the deciduous character of the guide-species.The Eurovegchecklist (Mucina et al. 2016) put forth the proposition that all the pubescentoak forests are to be considered as the evolution (or the remnants) of a previous formof steppe-forests coming from the East and therefore to be classified in the Querceteapubescentis.In this contribution we have statistically analysed all the Quercus pubescens s.l.communities described for the Italian Peninsula at present and proposed a syntaxonomicand coenological interpretation on the basis of floristic, ec

Autore Pugliese

• Terzi Massimo

Tutti gli autori

• Di Pietro R.; Angiolini L.; Armiraglio S.; Caccianiga M.; Ciaschetti G.; Gigante D.; Rosati L.; Terzi M.; Viciani D.

Titolo volume/Rivista

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Anno di pubblicazione

2018

ISSN

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ISBN

978-83-950944-0-8

Numero di citazioni Wos

Nessuna citazione

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Settori ERC

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Codici ASJC

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