B. Papp szerk.: Studia Botanica Hungarica 30-31. 1999-2000 (Budapest, 2000)

Szurdoki, Erzsébet, Tóth, Zoltán; Pelles, Gábor: The Sphagnum populations of the Zemplén Mts, NE Hungary

DISCUSSION The larger mires and fens are well-known, they can be easily localised, and may exist for a long period of time. There are numerous publications, data in herbaria and vegetation maps which help the scientist who investigates the changes in the vegetation. The comparative study, however, is not easy and the scientist can only show the main directions of changes and register the appearance or disappearance of species in the large vegetation units. The largest Sphagnum occurrences of peat accumulated fens along the Komlóska and Kemence Valleys (3,3, 4), which have a good water supply, could survive in the last decades and presumably will exist in the future too. The Sphagnum species of some occurrences described earlier along these valley systems have shown certain changes (1, 3, 4); there is a new occurrence (2) and some occurrences have disappeared (5, 6). S. contortum is the most frequent peatmoss, the quantity of S. centrale has been decreasing and S. palustre was not found by the authors in the whole valley-systems. There is a species, S. compactum, new to the whole investigated area. The smaller Sphagnum patches and occurrences are less-known. Once located, it is difficult, or in most cases, impossible to decide whether these are new or old establishments. Nobody really knows the dynamics of these patches and occurrences of Sphagnum, when and why they colonise a certain place, where the propagulums came from, how long these patches will exist, what sorts of environmental changes they can tolerate. One additional problem is that they are not easy to find on the basis of literature data or the labels of specimens. It would be worthwhile to study these occurrences thoroughly in the future. Will they still exist there? Will a fen or an intermediate mire community develop there? How will the Sphagnum, species change during these processes? Based on the fact that the dynamics of Sphagnum species appears to be shorter, then they were described in earlier publications, these occurrences might disappear. This suspicion is supported, for example, by the disappearance of Sphagna around Telkibánya (6, 15, 16). The small Sphagnum patches and occurrences can be found in many different habitats. In this study, three types were distinguished on the basis of water supply and the species. The new Sphagnum species for the Zemplén Mts in these habitats are S. fallax, S. flexuosum, S. fimbriatum, S. girgensohnii, S. magellanicum, S. obtusum and S. squarrosum. One species, S. riparium, is new for the whole country. Although 4 occurrences (7, 16, 17, 18) from these types of habitats were published, only one occurrence ( 18) of them can be found recently. On the other hand, 10 new occurrences from these types have been described.