Flora naczyniowa poletek łowieckich w województwie wielkopolskim

Food plots are specially designated places located in the immediate vicinity of forests or within them, intended for the production of food or providing food for wild animals. One of their types – production food plots – because of their management seem to be very similar to agroecosystems. Like in agroecosystems, also other, self-sown species appear in food plots. This is the first floristic study of food plots, aimed to determine their species composition. Research was conducted in 226 productive food plots located in 37 forest districts in the Wielkopolska Province. In each plot, within an area of 400 m2, vascular plant species were recorded and their cover-abundance was assessed. Description of the flora took into account taxonomical structure, plant life forms, geograpphic historical and socioecological groups. The work provides a full list of identified species along with their location and basic floristic characteristics. In total, 313 plant species were recorded. The species represented 5 taxonomic classes, the most numerous of which was Liliopsida with 247 species. Among the 48 families identified, the families Asteraceae and Poaceae are the richest (contained 57 and 50 species, respectively). The genus richest in species is Polygonum (10 species). The genus Polygonum is the most numerous and contains 10 species. A total of 28 crop species were cultivated in the plots. The most commonly cultivated crop was Helianthus tuberosus, present in 80 plots. A rare crop plant cultivated in food plots was Avena strigosa, an archaeophyte threatened with extinction. Of the 67 weed species, Setria glauca was the most common with 112 locations. Almost 67% of the flora of the feeding plots are species of native origin, and about 33% belong to anthopophytes. Among permanently established anthropophytes, archaeophytes predominate - 13.7% (43 species) over kenophytes - 10.5% (33 species). There are three species of ephemerophytes: Lycopersicon esculentum, Panicum capillare and
Solanum tuberosum. Some threatened segetal species were recorded in the studied food plots: Agrostemma githago, Anchusa arvensis, Avena strigosa, Centaurea cyanus, Hypericum humifusum, and Papaver dubium.