I’m planning a trip to Europe at the end of summer and I study oaks. So, my big love of oaks makes me want to visit areas with lots of diversity to find as many species as possible! I’d appreciate it if anyone knows some biodiverse regions I could hit up.
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In Apulia, Italy, you can find Q. calliprinos, Q. ilex, Q. suber, Q. troiana, Q. macrolepis, Q. cerris, Q. petraea, Q. dalechampii, Q. robur, Q. virgiliana, Q. pubescens and Q. frainetto, judging by Pignatti’s Flora d’Italia. It’s a small enough region to be visited looking for all of them in less than a week.
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It much depends on what you mean for “diversity”. Especially if diversity of species or just variability. Take, for example, Q. pubescens. In recent years it has been treated for Italy accepting the existence of a relatively high number of species. Anyway there are doubts on the real independence of these taxa and the results of a recent paper could suggest that they actually are just manifestation of a very broad variability of a single species.
Here you can make a search for each Euromediterranean country:
https://europlusmed.org/cdm_dataportal/search
In the end, I would suggest you to collect samples in the Mediterranean area and I bet that Turkey has the highest specific diversity among countries, maybe followed by Italy.
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Wow that’s quite a few! Thank you!
Mainly specific diversity, but I wouldn’t be complaining about variability. This is mainly just for fun more than it is work but I would like a good range of leaves collected. Thank you for the resource and advice!
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