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Milan Chytrý @milanchytry.bsky.social · 6d

The new issue of the IAVS Bulletin features four articles about two remarkable men who had a huge impact on European and global vegetation science, and who also greatly shaped my own scientific journey: John Rodwell and Sandro Pignatti.
cdn.ymaws.com/www.iavs.org...

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Milan Chytrý @milanchytry.bsky.social · 10d

In our new article, Zdenka Preislerová and I review the trends in describing new syntaxa of European vegetation from the early 20th century to the publication of the EuroVegChecklist (Mucina et al. 2016) and beyond.
@applvegsci.bsky.social @euroveg.bsky.social
🔗Open access: doi.org/10.1111/avsc...

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Milan Chytrý @milanchytry.bsky.social · Sep 6

"Durancie" is an old plum variety commonly planted in the Moravian Carpathians. It is ripening now, in September. For generations, these plums have been used to create unique regional delicacies. By growing and harvesting them in our garden, I am helping to keep this local tradition alive. 😀

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Milan Chytrý @milanchytry.bsky.social · Sep 5

In our new Nature Communications article led by Rashmi Paudel, we show that plant species that spread within their native range have a higher probability of becoming established outside their native range.
🔗https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-63293-6
🔗Sharable PDF link: rdcu.be/eEmQr

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Milan Chytrý @milanchytry.bsky.social · Aug 31

In our new Preslia article, led by Barbora Klímová, we corrected bias in the occurrence data using rarefaction and mapped the geographical distribution of plant species richness in Czechia (left: raw data, right: corrected data).
🔗 doi.org/10.23855/pre...

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Milan Chytrý @milanchytry.bsky.social · Aug 29

In our new article with Rui-Ling Liu and Wen-Yong Guo in J. Ecol., we quantified how plant strategy scores derived from leaf traits (Pierce method) correlate with other plant traits and plant environmental preferences.
🔗 Open-access article: doi.org/10.1111/1365...
‪@journalofecology.bsky.social‬

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Milan Chytrý @milanchytry.bsky.social · Aug 23

Lotus tenuis (a species of slightly saline soils) differs from L. corniculatus mainly by quantitative characters. If both species grow at the same site, the differences are clear:
L. tenuis (left): 🌼 smaller flowers, 🌿 narrower leaflets
L. corniculatus (right): 🌼 larger flowers, 🌿 broader leaflets

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Milan Chytrý @milanchytry.bsky.social · Aug 12

🌱 In our new article led by Luigi Cao Pinna, we show that alien plants in the Mediterranean often shift their niches, i.e. either do not fill or expand their occupied climatic space compared to the native range, partly depending on their traits.
🔗 fulltext: doi.org/10.1111/gcb....

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Milan Chytrý @milanchytry.bsky.social · Jul 27

Pinus flexilis is dispersed by birds such as the nutcracker (Nucifraga), which hide the seeds in various places to retrieve and eat them later. If such a cache is not retrieved, several pine individuals can germinate and establish in the same place, forming tree clusters with several trunks.

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Milan Chytrý @milanchytry.bsky.social · Jul 27

Two subalpine pines from the Rocky Mountains have contrasting seed regeneration strategies.
Pinus contorta is serotinous: the seeds remain in the cones for several years. Forest fire releases them, they fall to the ground, and a massive regeneration of even-aged pine forest stands begins.

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Milan Chytrý @milanchytry.bsky.social · Jul 27

This is the result of the largest fire ever recorded in Colorado, which lasted for 4 months (Aug-Dec 2020) and burned 840 km2 (!) of forest. Like in other large forest fires, the ultimate cause was the suppression of small fires for several decades, which led to a significant accumulation of fuel.

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Milan Chytrý @milanchytry.bsky.social · Jul 26

Many natural habitats in the Rocky Mountain foothills are heavily invaded by two Eurasian grasses: Bromus inermis and Agropyron cristatum agg. Both species were intentionally sown to prevent wind erosion after the conversion of prairie to arable land and subsequent massive dust storms in the 1930s.

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Milan Chytrý @milanchytry.bsky.social · Jul 25

Bouteloua gracilis (blue grama, in the picture) is an example of a prairie C4 grass. As soil moisture increases, C4 photosynthesis becomes less favourable and C3 grasses become more common, including invasive European C3 grasses such as Bromus tectorum

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Milan Chytrý @milanchytry.bsky.social · Jul 25

Short-grass prairie in the rain shadow of the Rocky Mountains (Pawnee National Grassland, Colorado). In this area with less than 350 mm annual precipitation, the prairie is dominated by grasses with a C4 photosynthetic pathway.

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Milan Chytrý @milanchytry.bsky.social · Jul 25

We have begun the Pre-symposium Excursion of the International Association for Vegetation Science in northern Colorado, led by Scott Franklin, Bob Peet, Brenda Wichmann and local experts.
These excursions are essential to the international exchange of ideas about the diversity of plant communities.

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Milan Chytrý @milanchytry.bsky.social · Jul 23

🌱 University's Community Garden 🌻
The 67th IAVS Symposium is hosted by the University of Northern Colorado. This is University's Community Garden, where faculty, staff and students can grow vegetables and flowers while building community and supporting local biodiversity.
@iavs5.bsky.social

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Milan Chytrý @milanchytry.bsky.social · Jul 22

Open access in Plant Biosystems:
🔗 doi.org/10.1080/1126...

📷 Pictures were taken during our students' excursion in northern Albania in 2016.

Classification of Quercus trojana forests in southeastern Europe and Türkiye

This paper deals with Quercus trojana forest plant communities on the Balkan Peninsula, in Italy and Türkiye. Many syntaxa were described, but no unified syntaxonomic system based on a numerical an...

doi.org

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Milan Chytrý @milanchytry.bsky.social · Jul 22

🌳 Quercus trojana, a remarkable semi-evergreen oak of the Balkans, Türkiye, and southern Italy, finally has its forests classified! Our international team analyzed vegetation plots across the species’ entire range and created the first vegetation classification of Quercus trojana forests.

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Milan Chytrý @milanchytry.bsky.social · Jul 16

A big thank you to everyone who supported and made this idea happen 💚
Please keep your fingers crossed that beautiful flowers will take root here by next year 🌼🌿
By the way, small local biodiversity actions like this can be done in almost any village, right? 🌱✨

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Milan Chytrý @milanchytry.bsky.social · Jul 16

The mayor of our village supported the idea and got our meadow ploughed to support seed germination. Colleagues from the Czech Ornithological Society and volunteers from Zebra Technologies mowed the grassland in the nature monument and helped us to transport the green hay to our village.

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Milan Chytrý @milanchytry.bsky.social · Jul 16

Our village owns land under power lines that needs regular mowing. It only has a few common grasses and invasive plants, so from a biodiversity perspective, it’s a wasteland. It made perfect sense to try creating a wildflower meadow in our village by transferring green hay from the nearby village.

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Milan Chytrý @milanchytry.bsky.social · Jul 16

🌱🌸 We’re trying to create a wildflower meadow using green hay 🌼🍀
In our nearby village, there’s a Nature Monument with a species-rich dry grassland that needs mowing for habitat care. The hay often gets burned because there’s no use for it, even though it’s full of seeds of rare plants.

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Milan Chytrý @milanchytry.bsky.social · Jul 15

The Czech edition was prepared when Mattioli was living in Prague as an archduke's private physician. Many new plant illustrations were made for this edition, which were also used in the German edition (this picture), published in Prague a year later.

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Milan Chytrý @milanchytry.bsky.social · Jul 15

Mattioli began his botanical encyclopedic work by translating into Italian the 1st-century book "De materia medica", which was the most important manual of herbal medicine for 15 centuries, but he added so many new observations and species that it became a qualitatively new botanical encyclopaedia.

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Milan Chytrý @milanchytry.bsky.social · Jul 15

Original print of Mattioli's Herbal, 1st Czech edition from 1562, on display in the Kroměříž City Museum. Pietro Andrea Mattioli, a 16th-century Italian physician and botanist.

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