A flora vascular da crista da Serra do Curral

Abstract

The flora of Brazil, extremely rich, consists of approximately 34 thousand species of vascular plants. The great challenge is to known this diversity, allowing the sustainable use, management and conservation of this huge genetic heritage. In this context, flora studies play a fundamental role, especially in the new millennium, through online publications, which democratize information once restricted to the scientific community. Interactive identification keys are examples of innovative alternatives for identifying plant species that occur in a given area, increasing free and fast access to information on local floristic diversity. In Brazil, ferruginous rocky fields or ironstone outcrop are unique ecosystems that have a rich floristic diversity, including endemic and threatened species. In the State of Minas Gerais, the ironstone outcrops of the Iron Quadrangle are one of the most threatened environments, due to the intense anthropogenic activities and the almost nonexistence of Conservation Units in the region. The Serra do Curral Municipal Park, located in the city of Belo Horizonte, has a ferruginous rocky field formation in its highest portion and is part of the Serra do Curral, a mountainous formation that possess a biological, cultural and historical importance and is inserted in the northern portion of the Iron Quadrangle. Despite this, there is no inventory of its flora which assesses its richness and the occurrence of key species for conservation, such as endemic and endangered species. In this work, we produced an inventory of the vascular flora of the top of the Serra do Curral Municipal Park and created an illustrated interactive key of multiple entries to identify its flora. The inventory of the species was carried out from collections in the field by the method of walking, monthly, in a period of one year. The inventory revealed a total of 51 families, 129 genera and 163 species, of which 158 are angiosperms and 5 are monilophytes. The most species-rich families were Asteraceae (30), Fabaceae (13), Melastomataceae (9), Poaceae and Solanaceae (8), Rubiaceae (7), Myrtaceae and Orchidaceae (6 each), and together they represent more than 53% of the total of species recorded. Most species occur in the Cerrado Domain (136, with 24 exclusive) and the Atlantic Forest (113, with 8 exclusive). In addition, ten threatened species were recorded. The interactive key was created in the Xper3 program and included 29 descriptors and 161 vegetative and reproductive character states. The present work reveals that the interactive key has a great potential for the dissemination of the vascular flora of the top of the Serra do Curral Municipal Park, which comprises a considerable richness of species, including endemic and endangered ones and represents the great floristic diversity of the rocky field in Brazil.