Phanerogamic flora of central-north coastal of Rio Grande do Sul state, Brazil

Abstract

An inventory of phanerogams from the central-north coastal plain of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, is presented here. During two years, all the phytophysiognomies of the municipalities of Cidreira, Balneário Pinhal and Palmares do Sul were sampled. The species were classified according to the environment of occurrence, preferential habit, naturalness and degree of threat. A total of 383 species were collected from 92 families, of which 365 (95%) native and 18 (5%) were exotic. The richest families were Asteraceae (45), Poaceae (30), Cyperaceae (24) and Fabaceae (23). The field formations presented the highest floristic richness (146), followed by forest (132) and wetland (17). The preferred habits were herbaceous and shrub (68%), habit tree (20%), climbers (6%), epiphytes (6%) and parasites (1%). In all, 18 species were registered in some threat category. The data found represent a high species richness for the region, and are compatible with the estimates and those found by other authors in coastal areas, and are basically due to the phytophysiognomic and geographic mosaic of the region and the influence of the Mata Atlântica and Pampa biomes. Threats to the local flora were evidenced, mainly related to the degradation of the natural habitats by the agricultural and silvicultural crops.

Key words:
Atlantic forest; pioneer formations; aquatic macrophytes; coastal region; restinga