Chorological notes on the Sicilian endemic Euphorbia papillaris (Euphorbiaceae)

Thanks to the discovery of a new important site in the Trapani Mountains, the distribution of Euphorbia papillaris, a rare plant endemic to N-W Sicily, is revised. On the basis of the unpublished record, one of the two hypotheses on the discovery of the species in Sicily, previously advanced, is here confirmed. Floristic and ecological information on the new locality are also provided

Recent and new taxonomic acquisitions in some native genera of Asteraceae from southern Italy and Sicily

After a brief review of the recent acquisition in some native genera of family Asteraceae from southern Italy and Sicily, a new endemic species of Anthemis (sect. Hiorthia) is described from Sicily and named Anthemis parlatoreana. The locus classicus of the new taxon, falling in the NW Tyrrhenian coast of the island (Castellammare del Golfo, Trapani), coincides with that of Ptilostemon greuteri, another endemic very rare species of the Sicilian flora. Data on the morphology, distribution, ecology and conservation status of the new species are provided. The taxonomic relationships with the other Sicilian taxa of the same section, in particular A. cupaniana, are also analyzed. The simultaneous presence in the same site of other endemic plants enriches the area of the limestone reliefs of Castellammare del Golfo and all of north-western Sicily with biogeographic significance and biogenetic importance

Notulae to the Italian alien vascular flora: 15

In this contribution, new data concerning the distribution of vascular flora alien to Italy are presented. It includes new records, confirmations, exclusions for Italy or for Italian administrative regions. Nomenclatural and distribution updates, published elsewhere, and corrections are provided as Suppl. material 1

Entrepreneurship, export orientation and economic growth

In this paper the relationship between a country’s prevalence of new ventures and its rate of economic growth is investigated, while taking into account new ventures’ export orientation. It is generally acknowledged that new venture creation as well as export activity may both be important strategies for achieving national economic growth. However, to our knowledge no attempt has been made to investigate empirically the role of export-driven new ventures in economic growth. We focus on the national level and use data for a sample of 34 countries over the period 2002–2008. Our results suggest that, on top of a positive relation between entrepreneurial activity in general and subsequent macroeconomic growth, there is an additional positive effect of export-oriented early-stage entrepreneurship in higher-income countries. However, there is no such additional effect in lower-income countries

Conservation status of the endemic vascular flora of Sicily

The results of a comparative study of the quantitative data of the IUCN risk categories attributed to the endemic taxa of the Sicilian vascular flora are reported. 430 Sicilian strictly endemic taxa has been evaluated by comparing the data of the risk categories attributed by published sources. 400 taxa have received at least one assessment of their conservation status, 30 taxa have not yet been considered. 278 received an assessment of their conservation status in accordance with the IUCN criteria, while the remaining 152 have not yet been evaluated according to these criteria