Red Listing plants under full national responsibility: Extinction risk and threats in the vascular flora endemic to Italy
Abstract Taxa endemic to a country are key elements for setting national conservation priorities and for driving conservation strategies, since their persistence is entirely dependent on national policy. We applied the IUCN Red List categories to all Italian endemic vascular plants (1340 taxa) to assess their current risk of extinction and to highlight their major threats. Our results revealed that six taxa are already extinct and that 22.4% (300 taxa) are threatened with extinction, while 18.4% (247; especially belonging to apomictic groups) have been categorized as Data Deficient. Italian endemic vascular plants are primarily threatened by natural habitat modification due to agriculture, …
Seed germination under osmotic stress across different wild populations of mountain rye (Secale strictum (C.Presl) C.Presl))
The selection of resilient cultivars could help stem the losses in forage production due to a changing climate. Secale strictum is a wild grass with interesting potential as a forage crop. We studied the germination requirements of six wild S. strictum populations, representative of the whole species distribution range in Italy and occurring under different osmotic conditions (0 MPa, −0.8 MPa, −1.0 MPa, −1.2 MPa, −1.4 MPa and −1.6 MPa). Our aim was to find beneficial seed and germination traits for the possible use of this species as a crop. Different accessions of domesticated Secale cereale and ×Triticosecale were used as comparison. Some populations of S. strictum were drought tolerant a…