Guide to the flora of Asinara Park

The portal on the plant biodiversity of the territory of Asinara National Park consisting of a multilingual guide to the approximately 800 vascular species in the territory, which can be consulted on.line and in the field via handhelds and cell phones through the iOS and android mobile operating system.

The project carried out aimed to deepen knowledge about the flora of Asinara Island. In particular, there were two objectives:

1) Implement the floristic database of the flora of Italy;

2) To produce a computerizable floristic database with the aim of building a digital key for the recognition of plant species on the island of Asinara.

The work, which lasted about a year, took place in several stages. In theinitial phase, a literature search was conducted on the flora of the island. For this purpose, the most widely used sources were Bocchieri’s flora (Isola dell’Asinara e la sua flora, Bocchieri 1988) and “Vegetation and plant landscape of Asinara National Park” (Pisanu et al,2014 ). This was followed by a phase of study and consultation, carried out at The DIPNET Herbarium of the University of Sassari. This phase was conducted in parallel with field trips to the study area, which were necessary for the collection and taxonomic determination of the entities of the flora of the island of Asinara. Flora of Italy by S. Pignatti and Flora of Sardinia by P.V. Arrigoni, as well as numerous monographs on different genera, were used to determine the species. For nomenclature, Conti et al., 2005 was followed.

The sampling phase was carried out during the time period from April 2014 to April 2015.

Herbarium consultations served to validate bibliographic data, implement the floristic list, and validate sampling localities. During the herborizations, photographic material was produced, with special interest in systematic characters to be included in the keys. Finally, descriptions of the photographed species were compiled for inclusion in the Plant Finder. Of each, the locality of discovery was noted, and a list of localities where their presence was recorded was produced.

The sampling and analysis phases of the material produced were followed by a phase of verifying the functionality of the dichotomous keys.