B. Papp szerk.: Studia Botanica Hungarica 34. 2003 (Budapest, 2003)

Csontos, Péter, Tamás, Júlia; Balogh, Lajos: Thousand-seed weight records of species from the flora of Hungary, I. Monocotyledonopsida

O 05 O <U TJ CD CD CO TJ c (Ö CO o -2 -1 0 1 234567 Naturalness value of species 9 10 Fig. 1. Seed mass and naturalness value of 38 monocotyledonous species of the Hungarian flora. Empty squares indicate posititions of Orchidaceae species. ables. (Orchids, though indicated, were not encountered because their seeds have different anatomy with lack of endosperm, thus they should not be discussed together with the "normal" seeded species.) The statistical evaluation by r-test confirmed a significantly higher seed mass of species with "high" naturalness values compared to that of "low" naturalness values (n

(low) = 6; n

(high) = 11; p < 0.1 ; critical t '-value = 2.006; calculated f-value = 2.358). We found the results of the pilot test interesting and thought provoking, that may reflect to both underlying ecological phenomena and human attitude in evaluating species. Larger seed size indicate more pronounced K-strategist behaviour of a species and it is often linked with higher sensitivity to habitat disturbances that may cause the rarity of those species thus involving a higher value given by botanists. For better interpretation of the relationship between seed mass, naturalness and rarity of a species further studies are required using larger set of species with a detailed analysis of their function in the Hungarian vegetation. * * * Acknowledgements - We are indebted to several colleagues for their contribution in collecting seed samples. Many thanks are due to Hedvig Punka for the accurate handling of the samples, and to Erzsébet Szurdoki and István Rácz for their comments on the manuscript. Financial support from the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (OTKA T025350 and T037732), and Széchenyi István Fellowships grant (SZÖ 372/2002, given to the first author) is greatly acknowledged.