L. Lőkös szerk.: Studia Botanica Hungarica 24. 1993 (Budapest, 1993)
Kereszty, Zoltán: The distribution of the genus Scilla in Hungary
STUDIA BOTANICA HUNGARICA (Antea: Fragmenta Botanica) XXrV. 1993 pp. 51-75 The distribution of the genus Scilla in Hungary By Z. Kereszty (Received March 15, 1993) Abstract: The taxonomic re-evaluation of the Hungarian representatives of the genus was made by the author on the basis of examinations covering a period of ten years (KERESZTY 1988). Through the regular observation of the localities and the living samples of 70 populations found in various parts of the country, a more accurate taxonomic and geobotanical distribution of the genus representatives living in our country could be worked out. Partly by verifying, partly by completing or modifying SPETA'S (1974) conceptions the author submits a short summary of his results, and the data of the literary, herbarial and living plant materials utilized. After a critical summing up of the literature relating to the genus, a full bibliography of the publications appeared up to 1988 and used by the author is presented. The Hungarian representatives of the genus are elements of the sub-Mediterranean —Central European —Pontic flora whose area extends from Belgium over South Germany to the Ukraine. They are absent from the genuine West European oceanic zone, while in the Mediterranean they occur everywhere except the Iberian peninsula; though in Greece and on the Aegean islands their incidence is sporadic. Some areas, again, reach over to Asia Minor. In Hungary, they generally exist in scattered areas while forming isolated populations in welldefined localities, such as hardwood forest of inundation areas; hornbeam-oak forest and beechwoods, pass-forest and, more rarely, in dry oak- and rock-forests of the central mountain range. The species to be found in Hungary were signalled in many plant-associations of hornbeam-oak-, beech- and riverine forest of Central Europe. They are equally characteristic of the sub-Mediterranean Fagion illyricum zone or the submontainous mixed oak- and beechforests of the Balkans as of the Central and East Balkanic Moesian Quercus frainetto associations and in mixed Rumanian oak-forests. As far as known today, their highest locality is in Styria (950 m). The extension of the species in Yugoslavia is only known in broad outlines. It is certain, however, that, starting from Vienna, the characteristic species of the entire Danube valley and its environment is the S. vindobonensis, replacing the S. bifolia in the entire area. In the course of the investigation it has been clarified that the S. bifolia appearing in the identification books does nor occur in Hungary, and is found in Austria only north to Linz as well as sporadically in some localities of Yugoslavia. From the Austrian extension of the present populations, SPETA (1974) considers this relationship to be a Tertiary relict, based on the joint occurrence of other relict species, such as Cyclamen purpurascens , Aconitum anthora anùArabis pauciflora. In his opinion, they survived the glacial periods in sheltered areas of a comparatively favourable microclimate. These populations, becoming isolated during the glacial-period, could have provided a starting-point for the originally uniform group to divide into local species, along with probable hybridisation. According to him, this may result from the fact that, on the one hand, the species do not show any inclination to expand, their area even getting definitely more restricted, and, On the other hand, that
