Analysis of the irrigated crop flora from the South West of Castilla y León

Abstract

A study of the flora of irrigated crops in two Spanish provinces (Salamanca and Zamora, SW Castilla y León) has been carried out. After careful analysis of a catalogue comprising more than 344 taxa, we have found that 237 of them (68,9 %) belong to 8 families, the most relevant of which are Compositae, Gramineae and Leguminosae, although the latter is less important among the most frequent species. The best represented chorological group is that of those widely distributed species, to which more than half of the species in the catalogue belong, as well as 85,4 % of the most invasive ones. On the contrary the group of Mediterranean and endemic taxa represent just a third of the total. The predominant biological type is the terophytes (66,6 % of the annotated species), while hemicryptophytes represent 26 % and geophytes just less than 5 %. Anemochory is the commonest dispersal type (ca. 70 % of the species) followed by barochory and zoochory. The latter has greater relative importance (more or less 30 %) among the most harmful plants.