History of the Flora and Vegetation

Abstract

The flora of the Maltese islands was investigated by numerous authors, who since the seventeenth century have contributed to provide information on the indigenous and cultivated plants occurring in this Central Mediterranean territory. The earliest records date back to some prelinnaean authors (Abela 1647; Boccone 1674, 1697), who cited from Malta only few species or reported lists of species (Bonamicus 1670; Cavallini 1689). Later, some plants from Malta were mentioned by Linnaeus (1753), Forskåll (1775), Dumont D’Urville (1822), Giacinto (1811), Bertoloni (1829), Brenner (1838), etc., while the first checklists on Maltese flora were published by Zerapha (1827–1831), who recorded 644 indigenous and cultivated species, but with numerous incorrect identifications, Nyman (1844) listing 73 species, Grech Delicata (1853) published a list of 716 phanerogams, lastly Duthie (1872, 1874–1875) and Gulia (more works, see Sommier and Caruana Gatto 1915) increased the lists of previously published Maltese floras of several species not yet reported from the islands. During the twentieth century, several floras regarding the Maltese Islands were published, among these one of the most important is “Flora Melitensis nova” by Sommier & Caruana Gatto (1915), which is the most comprehensive flora of the period, where all the species occurring in the Maltese territory are listed with a detailed indication of the growth locality and of the authors who had quoted them, often with taxonomic comments. These authors report 902 species of phanerogams and 1085 species of cryptogams (fungi, algae, lichens, mosses, liverworts and ferns). Other Maltese floras were published by Borg (1927), in which almost all the species reported by Sommier and Caruana Gatto (1915) are examined, and successively by Lanfranco (1969a, b), Haslam et al. (1977), Weber and Kenzior (2006), Casha (2015), Lanfranco and Bonnett (2015) and by numerous other authors, who have published various floristic contributions, among the more recent can be quoted: Lanfranco (1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1989), Silverwood (1971), Kramer et al. (1972), Briffa (1986), Stevens and Lanfranco (1995), Bartolo et al. (2001), Buttigieg and Lanfranco (2001), Mifsud (2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012), Stevens (2003), Tabone (2007, 2008), Casha (2009), Sciberras and Sciberras (2010), Sciberras et al. (2012), Casha and Mifsud (2013), Mifsud et al. (2016a, 2016b). Based on these floras, the autochthonous and allochthonous ferns and spermatophytes amount to about 1100 taxa (species and subspecies enclose), even if some of them have not been found anymore or are thought to have become extinct. Besides, there are numerous taxonomic contributions regarding the Maltese flora, where critical species and groups were investigated with the description of a lot of new taxa, many of which endemic, all based on specimens collected in these islands. Among these papers are to be mentioned: (a) Bertoloni (1829) proposing for the Centaurea spathulata Zerapha nom. inval. the new name C. crassifolia (Fig. 3.1a), an endemic species currently included in the genus Cheirolophus by Susanna et al. (1999); (b) Sommier (1907), who described Melitella pusilla new genus and species considered initially endemic to Malta, but later found in various other countries of the Mediterranean and also in Australia, which was attributed by Merxmüller (1968) to the genus Crepis (Fig. 3.4a); (c) Béguinot (1907) described Romulea melitensis (Fig. 3.4b) as new species endemic of the Maltese Islands, providing successively a larger observations (Béguinot 1908), which more recently has been recorded from southern Sicily by Brullo et al. (2009a, b, c), while Mifsud (2015) believes that R. melitensis is an uncertain name replacing it with R. variicolor, which must be considered an superfluous name; (d) Sommier and Caruana Gatto (1915) described from Malta Anacaptis urvilleana (Fig. 3.1d), a neglected species of Orchidaceae, later revalued by Del Prete et al. (1984), proposing also as distinct species Anthemis urvilleana by Candolle de (1838) considered as var. urvilleana of A. secundiramea Biv. (Fig. 3.1b); (e) Ciferri and Giacomini (1950) considered a distinct species Allium melitense (Fig. 3.3b), taxon proposed by Borg (1927) as A. ampeloprasum L. var. melitense Sommier & Caruana nom. prov.; (f) Botschantzev (1976) basing on a herbarium specimen identified a new shrub species of Salsoleae from Malta, describing it as Salsola melitensis, by Brullo 1984a, b transferred to the genus Darniella Maire (Fig. 3.2c), which is noticeably distinct from Salsola L. for several significant morphologic features; (g) Brullo (1979) described Chiliadenus bocconei (Fig. 3.1b), endemic of North African origin first reported by Boccone (1674) and later recorded with different names, all illegitimate or invalid; (h) Brullo (1980a, b), proposed to consider the sea-lavender previously attributed to Statice reticulata auct.fl.melit. not L. (1753), by Del Guacchio et al. (2018) more recently proposed as a reject nomen, to a new species named Limonium zeraphae (Fig. 3.2d), which is endemic to the Maltese islands; (i) Brullo et al. (1982) described a new Maltese species of Allium, indicated as A. lojaconoi (Fig. 3.1e), which in the past was attributed to A. parciflorum Viv., which is exclusive of Sardinia and Cosica; (j) Brullo and Pavone (1985) attributed the populations of Desmazeria sicula, previously quoted from Maltese Islands and Southern Sicily, to a new species named D. pignattii (Fig. 3.4c), which must be considered a geographic vicariant of D. sicula; (k) Brullo et al. (1988a, b), in a contribution on Mediterranean Limonium, pointed out that the Maltese populations previously referred to Statice cosyrensis Guss. must be attributed to a new species named Limonium melitense, morphologically well differentiated from L. zeraphae; (l) Brullo and Pavone (1987) attributed an archaic shrubby species of Chenopodiaceae, discovered in the Maltese island, to a new species Cremophyton lanfrancoi (Fig. 3.1c), including it within a monophytic genus, that, although morphologically and karyologically very differentiated from the other genera of the tribe Atripliceae, has been attributed by Kadereit et al. (2010) to the genus Atriplex, but from the phylogenetic tree published by these authors Cremonophyton lanfrancoi, constitutes together with Atriplex cana, both representing an old lineage of Atriplex, a sister isolated clade well separated from all other investigated Atriplex, for which these two species must be clearly to attribute to two different genera distinct from Atriplex; (m) Brullo et al. (1988a, b) published a taxonomic note on the Maltese flora, where they examined some endemic or rare species from Malta, such as Helichrysum melitense (Pignatti) Brullo et al. (Fig. 3.2f), belonging to the group of H. panormitanum Tineo ex Guss., Matthiola incana (L.) M.T. Aiton subsp. melitensis Brullo et al. (Fig. 3.3d), Elatine gussonei (Sommier) Brullo et al. (Fig. 3.4a); (n) Brullo and Pavone (1988) in their review on the genus Hyoseris described from Gozo a new suffruticose species named H. frutescens (Fig. 3.1f), more recently recorded also from Malta (Sciberras and Sciberras 2010); (o) Raffaelli and Ricceri (1988) recognized the specific rank of Euphorbia melitensis (Fig. 3.3a), critical species described by Parlatore (1869) from the Maltese islands, differentiating morphologically it from the related E. bivonae Steud. and E. papillaris (Boiss.) Raffaelli & Ricceri both occurring in Sicily; (p) Devillers and Devillers-Terschuren (1994) considered a distinct species (Ophrys melitensis) the orchid described from Malta by Salkowski (1992) as O. sphegodes Mill. subsp. melitensis; (q) Brullo et al. (2001a, b, c) referred the Maltese populations of Zannichellia palustris s.l. to a new endemic species named Z. melitensis (Fig. 3.3e), which represents a taxonomically very isolated species; (r) Brullo and Giusso (2006) attributed the Maltese population of Anthyllis hermanniae L. to a distinct endemic subspecies, named subsp. melitensis (Fig. 3.2a); (s) Peroni et al. (2013) referred the populations from Gozo of a rare Polypodium to P. vulgare subsp. melitense; (t) Mifsud et al. (2015) treated the Sedum album from Malta as an endemic subspecies, named subsp. rupi-melitense; (u) Brullo et al. (2017a, b) within taxonomic researches on the Silene colorata group, described from the Maltese Islands a new endemic species, represented by Silene melitensis (Fig. 3.3c), which is closely related to Silene crassiuscula from Sicily; (v) Brullo et al. (2018) emphasize that the Maltese populations of Ferula communisis must be treated as a morphologically well distinct species proposed as F. melitensis (Fig. 3.2e). Several others endemic species occurring apart from Malta also in some localities of Sicily and surrounding islands are: Senecio pygmaeus DC. (Maltese Islands, Lampedusa and southern Sicily) (Fig. 3.4d), Linaria pseudolaxiflora Lojac. (Maltese Islands and Linosa) (Fig. 3.3f), Filago cossyrensis Lojac. (Maltese Islands and Lampedusa), Daucus rupestris Guss. (Maltese Islands and Lampedusa) (Fig. 3.4f), Daucus lopadusanus Tineo (Maltese Islands and Lampedusa), Iris sicula Tod. (Maltese Islands and Sicily) (Fig. 3.4e), Oncostema sicula (Tineo ex Guss.) Speta (Maltese Islands and Sicily), Ophrys caesiella P. Delforge (Maltese Islands and southern Sicily), Hymenolobus revelierei (Jord.) Brullo subsp. sommierianum (Pamp.) Brullo (Maltese Islands, Lampedusa and Egadi Islands) (Fig. 3.4c), Plantago afra L. subsp. zwierleinii (Nicotra) Brullo (Maltese Islands and Sicily) and Euphorbia sommeriana C. Brullo & Brullo (Maltese Islands and Sicily) (Fig. 3.4b). Besides, some rare species having mainly a North African distribution are recorded from Malta, such as Pteranthus dichotomus Forssk. (Fig. 3.4h), Plantago crypsoides Boiss. (Figure 3.4f), Fagonia cretica L., Enarthrocarpus pterocarpus (Pers.) DC., Crucianella rupestris Guss. (Sicily, Lampedusa, Malta, Lybia and Egypt) (Fig. 3.4e), while other have a East Mediterranean distribution, such as Hypericum aegypticum L. subsp. webbii (Spach) N. Robson (Sicily, Lampedusa, Sardinia, Malta and Greece) (Fig. 3.4d) and Convolvulus oleifolius Desr. (Malta and East Mediterranean) (Fig. 3.4g).