An updated checklist of the vascular flora alien to Italy

Abstract

An updated inventory of the vascular flora alien to Italy, providing details on the occurrence at regional level, is presented. The checklist includes 1597 species, subspecies, and hybrids, distributed in 725 genera and 152 families; 2 taxa are lycophytes, 11 ferns and fern allies, 33 gymnosperms, and 1551 angiosperms. 157 taxa are archaeophytes and 1440 neophytes. The alien taxa currently established in Italy are 791 (570 naturalized and 221 invasive), while 705 taxa are casual aliens, 4 are not assessed, 7 are of unknown regional distribution, 47 have not been confirmed in recent times, 3 are considered extinct or possibly extinct in the country, and 40 are doubtfully occurring in Italy. This checklist allows to establish an up-to-date number (9792) of taxa constituting the whole (native and alien) Italian flora.

Keywords:

• Floristic diversity
• Mediterranean flora
• non-native flora
• plant invasion
• taxonomy

Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge collegues and friends who provided distribution, nomenclatural and taxonomic advices: Acta Plantarum forum, Michele Adorni, Aldo Antonietti, Pierfranco Arrigoni, Loris Bagli, Elena Barni, Rossano Bolpagni, Fausto Bonafede, Gianmaria Bonari, Giuseppe Brundu, Eugenia Bugni, Vito Buono, Mario Calbi, Maretta Colasante, Marco D’Antraccoli, Giuseppe D’Auria, Roberto Dellavedova, Giorgio Faggi, Umberto Ferrando, Giulio Ferretti, Filiberto Fiandri, Bruno Gallino, Maria Letizia Gargano, Giovanni Gestri, Luigi Ghillani, Riccardo Guarino, Matteo Gualmini, Laura Guglielmone, Lorenzo Lastrucci, Wolfgang Licht, Umberto Lodesani, Daniela Longo, Fabrizio Martini, Silviana Mauri, Enzo Meneguzzo, Anna Maria Mercuri, Marco Merli, Nicola Merloni, Sergio Montanari, Villiam Morelli, Paola Palazzolo, Guglielmo Pandolfo, Roberto Pascal†, Marziano Pascale, Mauro Pellizzari, Enrico V. Perrino, Franco Picco, Filippo Piccoli, Annalaura Pistarino, Enrico Romani, Walter Karl Rottensteiner, Daniele Saiani, Claudio Santini, Fabio Semprini, Consolata Siniscalco, Maurizio Sirotti, Gabriella Sonnante, Pier Giuseppe Varalda, Giuseppe Venturella, Filip Verloove, Marisa Vidali, Michele Vignodelli, Milena Villa.