B. Papp szerk.: Studia Botanica Hungarica 35. 2004 (Budapest, 2004)

Szollát, György; Schmotzer, András: Contributions to the flora and vegetation of the environs of Balassagyarmat (Hungary)

Although the primary task was not to make a complete floristical exploration, during the fieldwork (1999) we recorded the species on several dozens of sites as comprehensively as possible. One site though, the Ipolyszögi Égerláp, is relatively well surveyed since we made vegetation mapping as well. To provide a more complete picture of the flora and vegetation, the following enumeration combines our own survey data with those of earlier publications (Table 1 ). To record and communicate all observations possible in a concise way we chose the table format with the following reasoning. 1) Should we give acombined species list, much information at disposal on the individual sites would have been lost; 2) should we give all records according to individual sites, we would have to compose an unnecessarily large table in which case 3) we would not have been able to incorporate earlier data. In the present way, we could save space while making sure that no location data were lost. The nomenclature follows the FLORA database 1.2 (HORVÁTH et al. 1995). For the vegetation assessment, to determine and estimate the naturalness or degree of degradation, we used the scales given by Ferenc Németh and Tibor Seregélyes (NÉMETH and SEREGÉLYES 1989). The sites surveyed and described are numbered as shown on the map (Fig. 1). RESULTS In the following concise descriptions of the vegetation of the sites, and in our assessment of the degree of their degradation, we overview the dominant and characteristic species existing in the stands of different associations or vegetation types; we also draw attention to selected species of special merit, especially the protected ones. The species lists registered in the sites are in Table 1. Fig. 1. Map of the environs of Balassagyarmat with the numbers of the surveyed sites.