Guía Imprescindible de las Flores de la Depresión del Ebro

Text in Spanish

Guía Imprescindible de las Flores de la Depresión del Ebro (Essential Guide to the Flowers of the Valle del Ebro) Second edition

Discover the flora of the Valle del Ebro (in the Spanish communities of Aragon, Catalonia, and Navarra) in this profusely illustrated guide containing more than 1000 photographs of 643 species arranged in 18 ecosystems.

The Valle del Ebro, as described in this work, is an arid zone of low altitude centered on the Ebro river in its middle section, in the rain-shaow of the Pyrenees, surrounded by the mountains of the Pre-Pyrenees to the North, the Iberian System to the West and South, and the Coastal-Catalan mountain range to the East. It stretches from Tudela (Navarra) to Lérida, and from Monzón (Huesca) to Alcañiz (Teruel).Within this area the holm oak cab be found in some sheltered north facing locations. Rain is very scarce, in many places below 400 mm / year, and fog is persistent in winter. The dominant north-west wind (cerzo), is often severe, dessicating plants that are not adapted to the habitat.

The adaptations of plants to these circumstances in the Valle del Ebro, which are comparable to climatologically similar, but geographically distant areas in the southeast of the Peninsula, the north of Africa and the center of Asia, has produced an interesting steppe flora, reminiscent of open environments in general. This flora includes plants related to African and Asian ones, mixed with Euro-Siberian species that penetrate from the humid north via the Ebro and its tributaries, as well as a majority of plants that have a Mediterranean distribution. The isolation from other steppe areas has given rise to endemisms as restricted and fascinating as the flowering plant Boleum asperum. Increasingly, allochthonous species (from distant places) are becoming dominant in habitats that have been most altered by human activity.

This book is a completely renewed, expanded and improved version of Guía de la Flora de la Depresión del Ebro, written by the same author and published in 2004.