L. Lőkös szerk.: Studia Botanica Hungarica 24. 1993 (Budapest, 1993)

Kereszty, Zoltán: The distribution of the genus Scilla in Hungary

within the populations there is no differentiation with regard to the Galanthus and Leucojum species. SCHARFETTER (1922) also referred to the Tertiary relict character of the genus when including it among unispecific genera. They are characterized by living in masse in a type of vegetation without being the characteristic plants of the same. Such are also the likewise myrmecochorical Galanthus nivalis, Leucojum vemum and Asarum europaeum which assimilated to the sub-Mediterranean vital-rhythm: they flower early in the still humid light period and quickly bring their crop to maturity. The antecedents of this process are the meiosis in early autumn and the hibernation of the small young plant in the cold soil. In our country, they find these favourable conditions in the associations mentioned before. They generally live on basic soils, in half-shaded environment. As contrary to KREH'S (1938) opinion, we still cannot qualify them as umbrophilous plants, since, based on botanical garden experience, they also live very well leaving the shadow. As other geophyton species, they are also characterized by short flowering and maturing periods which may be started or accelerated by the smallest temperature increase. This is well supported by PRISZTER'S (1986) phenological data covering 20 years. The ecological investigations of locality by SMOLINSKAYA (1978) have also shown that these plants need water and nutritive matter somewhat more than average. By using pertaining literature, herbarial material, the control of 70 localities on the spot and oral information of experts, I summarized the extension data of the genus in Hungary, while grouping them according to geobotanical regional units broken down to species. The taxonomic distribution of the genus is new, being the result of a complex systemological supervision of living population samples, carried out over a period of more than ten years (KERESZTY 1988). It has become obvious that the taxon S. bifolia L. is replaced in our country by the S. vindobonensis Speta in river inundation areas and, at lower localities, with several local variations. On the mountain regions in oak- and beech forests S. drunensis Speta is found, while in the North East of the country lives a larger variety of S. kladnii Schur, migrated down from the Transylvanian and Slovakian mountains. As to their ploidic level and other cytotaxonomic marks, the species can be well distinguished; this is less possible with regard to its macromorphological characteristics. The S. vindobonensis is most frequent in the Danube valley and its surroundings, and by means of its yellow seed and white base of the perigon it can be well distinguished from the S. drunensis of mountainous areas, having a black seed and uniform light-blue flower. However, within the species aggregate, the external similarity of the individual plants is rather the same. The earlier literary and herbarial data have been supervised in the first place according to localities; this proved to be the best method, since the species do not mix with one another within one population. At the herbarial specimens, of course, also the discriminative value of the available morphological features have been taken into consideration. The species S. autumnalis L., blooming in autumn, occurs in two areas of our country only. On account of morphological, caryological and chemical differences, the group has been inserted back by Speta into the genus Prospero, described by Salisbury as early as 1866 (SPETA 1986). Detailed examinations have also shown that the genus Prospero, occurring from the West European Atlantic sites down to Mediterranean regions, may be separated into several smaller species. Within Hungary, the type with yellow bulbs and dark flowers, living along the southern shore of the Tertiary Paratethys (sea on the present day Békés—Csanád loess-land) has been set apart on the species level by Speta under the name P. paratethycum from the type P. elisae, having pink bulbs and lighter coloured flowers and occurring on the Balaton highlands from Tihany to Veszprém (SPETA 1982). The Law of the Nature Protection, enacted in 1982, declared the entire Scilla bifolia aggregate to be a protected species having an ideal value of Ft 500 per plant. The size and state of the populations of the group, hitherto considered a unique species, rather differs according to localities; thus it did not seem justified to include each new taxon into the Hungarian Red Data Book (1989) where (p. 278) solely the S. autumnalis L. figures among the species potentially en-