B. Papp szerk.: Studia Botanica Hungarica 38. 2007 (Budapest, 2007)
Csontos, Péter, Tamás, Júlia; Balogh, Lajos: Thousend-seed weight records of species from the flora of Hungary, II. Dicotyledonopsida
Studia bot. hung. 38, pp. 179-189, 2007 THOUSAND-SEED WEIGHT RECORDS OF SPECIES FROM THE FLORA OF HUNGARY, II. DICOTYLEDONOPSIDA P. CSONTOS 1 , J. TAMÁS 2 and L. BALOGH 3 1 MTA-ELTE Research Group in Theoretical Biology and Ecology, Eötvös Loránd University, H1117Budapest, Pázmány P. stny. 1/c, Hungary; cspeter@ludens.elte.hu 'Department of Botany, Hungarian Natural History Museum, H1476 Budapest, Pf. 222, Hungary * Department of Natural History, Savaria Museum, H-9700 Szombathely, Kisfaludy S. u. 9, Hungary New records of thousand-seed weight are reported for 227 members of the Hungarian dicotyledonous flora (including some introduced or naturalised species). Seed samples were harvested from natural populations, kept dry until the end of the vegetation period, then the seed weights were determined. One to three hundred-seed lots were used for measurements with accuracy of 0.1 mg (up to 30 g) and 0.1 g (above 30 g). Thirty-seven of the new records belong to protected species of the Hungarian flora. When the average seed weights of three distinct species groups (1: annuals and biennials, 2: non-woody perennials and 3: woody perennials) were compared, the group of woody plants showed significantly heavier seeds than the other two groups (KruskalWallis test, P < 0.001 ). However, seed weights of groups 1 and 2 were statistically identical. Key words: Hungarian flora, Dicotyledonopsida, life form, seed mass, thousand-seed weight INTRODUCTION The role of seeds and fruits in the dispersal and establishment of species and the recognition of their importance in vegetation restoration resulted an increasing interest in the reproductive propagules of higher plants (HOWE 1986, BAKKER et al. 1996, LEVEY et al. 2002). In the last few decades new ecological rules were recognised in the relationships between size and shape of seeds (or fruits) and other plant traits (THOMPSON and RABINOVITZ 1989, CSONTOS 1998, MILBERG et al. 2000). These studies require extensive databases of raw data on the species' reproductive propagules. As we discussed in an earlier paper (CSONTOS et al 2003) seed morphological and seed
