Management options for the conservation of rare arable plants in Europe

Rapid intensification of farming after 1950 resulted in a dramatic decline in plant species diversity in European arable ecosystems, and pronounced shifts in species composition, including severe decreases in many species closely adapted to traditional agricultural practices. These changes in the arable vegetation have also resulted in pronounced losses of food and habitat resources for the dependent fauna. To counter these trends, and to conserve traditional arable plant communities, various strategies have been developed, ranging from an integration of conservation aspects into existing farming systems with a focus on crop production (“land sharing strategies”) to “land sparing” measures where conservation aspects take priority over crop production. This review gives an overview of those strategies, with a particular focus on arable plant conservation. Among the systems integrating species conservation into regular crop production, good results were achieved with organic farming and traditional “low-intensity farming systems”. Where production-focused management cannot deliver rare species persistence, targeted conservation measures are required. A wide range of such measures is available, e.g. in the form of conservation headlands, uncropped cultivated field margins, and wildflower strips, and in the form of arable reserves and fields primarily managed for conservation objectives. Finally, we discuss the possibility of re-introducing rare arable species at suitable sites, highlighting the importance of favourable management for successful establishment, based on existing experimental evidence

Genetic evidence that Lomatia tasmanica (Proteaceae) is an ancient clone

Lomatia tasmanica W.M.Curtis is an endangered species with only one population. The population occurs over a distance of 1.2 km and consists of several hundred stems. Although it flowers occasionally, fruit production has never been observed, and it propagates vegetatively. The genetic diversity in L. tasmanica, and its relationship with the other species of this genus in Tasmania was investigated using allozyme analysis and chromosome counts. Sixteen isozyme loci were scored on 78 L. tasmanica plants collected from throughout the range of the species. No genetic diversity was found in L. tasmanica. Lomatia tinctoria possessed 22 (2n = 22) chromosomes, like other Lomatia species previously counted, while L. tasmanica had 33 to 29 chromosomes, which makes it an unstable triploid. The triploid nature of L. tasmanica would explain its lack of genetic diversity and its apparent sterility. This suggests that the entire species may be one genet, one of the largest plant clone ever found. Fossilised leaves identified as L. tasmanica by Jordan et al. (1991) and dated as at least 43 600 years old may indicate the minimum age of this genet. This clone maybe one the world’s oldest known living plant individual.

Plants playing at home: Advantage of native plant seeds for ski slope revegetation in the French Pyrenees

International audienceMachine levelling for the creation or maintenance of ski slopes is a major source of disturbance in high elevation ecosystems. Traditional, exogenous seed mixtures can help restoring plant cover and mitigate soil erosion, but they comprise species that are not ecologically adapted to high elevation conditions. Here, the use of local seed mixtures, harvested at nearby sites, was compared to that of exogenous seed mixtures for revegetation of three machine-graded ski runs with different soil conditions in the French Pyrenees. The plant cover, biomasses and associated soil microbial activity were recorded for four years following seeding. The results showed that the establishment of the plant cover was highly dependent of the soil conditions and strongly differed between paired plots that had received local or exogenous seed mixtures. In both seed treatments, some Poaceae dominated the plant cover, allowing the settlement of several spontaneous native species. But the plant cover established more rapidly and more densely, and included a larger cover of target, native species after seeding with local compared to exogenous seed mixtures