The website for the 68th Annual Symposium of the International Association for Vegetation Science has been launched: 2026gijon.iavs-meetings.org Many thanks to Borja Jiménez-Alfaro and his colleagues for this invitation. See you in June in Gijón, on the northern coast of Spain.

The website for the 34th European Vegetation Survey conference in Clermont-Ferrand, France, 7-11 September 2026, is now open: 34evs2026.org

Further evidence of the declining quality of endangered natural habitats has just been published in a new Preslia article on vegetation resurvey by Klára Friesová and collaborators. Open-access article: doi.org/10.23855/pre... Infographic by NotebookLM

Temperate deciduous forests are found in three global regions. We compared taxonomic and phylogenetic diversity of forest plant communities among these regions in a new Ecography article led by Javier Loidi and Josep Padullés Cubino: doi.org/10.1002/ecog... @ecography.bsky.social

Our new paper in Ecology Letters, led by Jan Divíšek, shows that non-invasive alien plant species that successfully establish within local plant communities tend to resemble the resident native species. In contrast, invasive alien species usually differ from native plants. doi.org/10.1111/ele....

The first European classification of vegetation in seasonally drained salt lakes, led by Svitlana Iemelianova from our Vegetation Science Group, and supported by an MSCA4Ukraine grant. Our findings will change the standard European vegetation classification system. doi.org/10.1111/avsc...

In our new article led by Gabriele Midolo, published in Ecology Letters, we show that plant species richness in European plant communities generally decreased between the 1960s and 1980s. However, since the 1990s, this trend seems to have stopped or even reversed. dx.doi.org/10.1111/ele....

From the seminar dedicated to the legacy of Sandro Pignatti. Pier Luigi Nimis is showing the Olivetti typewriter on which Pignatti wrote the Flora d'Italia (1982). This monograph consisted of three volumes with a total of nearly 2300 printed pages.

The event "Celebration the legacy of Sandro Pignatti" is now happening at the Botanical Garden of Rome organised by La Sapienza University of Rome @iavs5.bsky.social #EVS

A wonderful day celebrating the legacy of Sandro Pignatti. At the end of the event, a tree was planted by the Director of the Botanical Garden of Rome, Prof. Fabio Attorre, in memory of Prof. Pignatti. @iavs5.bsky.social #EVS

I am deeply honored and humbled to share that I have been elected as a member of the Academia Europaea.

Our new article in Nature Plants, led by César Leblanc, introduces Pl@ntBERT, an AI model inspired by language models like ChatGPT, but trained on > 1M vegetation plots from the EVA database. Article: doi.org/10.1038/s414... Demo: huggingface.co/spaces/Cesar... GitHub: github.com/cesar-leblan...

Postdoc position in coastal ecology at the University of Oldenburg, suitable for vegetation ecologists, application deadline 28 October uol.de/en/job/postd...

Our new online application EVA-MAP provides interactive maps of vegetation plots from the European Vegetation Archive and ReSurveyEurope databases. It enables filtering the plots by various criteria. More details can be found in this new article in the IAVS Bulletin: www.sci.muni.cz/botany/chytr...

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...

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...

"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. 😀

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

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...

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

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

🌱 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....

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

🌱 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

🌳 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.

🌱🌸 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.

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.

🌸 This year, we finally (!) have a good yield of apricots (Prunus armeniaca) here in South Moravia, after three years without apricots across the region. Apricots are thermophilous trees, thriving in Czechia’s warmest areas. Paradoxically, though, they are suffering from global warming.

🌱📷 iNaturalist is an excellent tool to combine teaching and collecting biodiversity data. During our botanical excursion to Romania, our students and other participants uploaded their findings to an iNaturalist project we created for this trip. We collected nearly 2000 observations of >700 species.

Visiting Valea Florilor (Valley of Flowers) with Alexandru Sabin Bădărău and his students from the Babeș-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca. This steppic grassland dominated by Stipa tirsa contains rarities such as Nepeta ucranica and Centaurea trinervia. Thank you, Sabin, for a wonderful excursion!

Today we are starting the 30th (anniversary!) "Botanical Excursion Abroad" of Masaryk University - a course that we initiated in 1996. This year we are travelling to Romanian Transylvania. This picture from our last excursion to Transylvania in 2017 needs no comments :-). It's time to return :-)

The bark of the main tree species of the Adriatic thermophilous oak forests: 🌳 Quercus cerris 🌳 Ostrya carpinifolia 🌳 Fraxinus ornus 🌳 Carpinus orientalis Photos from a subproject of our current fieldwork in Montenegro: resurvey of forest vegetation on Mount Lovćen after 60 years.

Melica nutans and M. picta are quite similar species that can sometimes grow together in the same forest patch. Melica nutans (left): darker, reddish-brown glumes, dark green leaves with a short ligule Melica picta (right): lighter, green-brown glumes, grey-green leaves with a conspicuous ligule

Similar, but different. Agrimonia eupatoria (left) and Aremonia agrimonoides (right), growing next to each other in an oak (Quercus cerris) forest in Montenegro.

We started another fieldwork period in Montenegro. This time, we study the effects of traditional agricultural practices on the plant diversity of species-rich grasslands and forests in submediterranean landscapes. This vegetation plot contained more than 120 species of vascular plants per 100 m2.

Is Leucojum aestivum promoted by grazing? On the grazed wet grassland in the Sava floodplain in Serbia, we have found that cattle avoid this plant. While other plants are heavily grazed, the Leucojum tussocks remain intact.

Four annual species of Geranium grow as weeds in our garden, and all of them are in flower right now: 🌸 Geranium molle - deeply notched petals 🌸 G. pusillum - less notched petals 🌸 G. rotundifolium - shallowly notched to entire petals 🌸 G. robertianum - rounded petal tips

Coppicing (cutting close to the ground, here an example of Quercus macranthera) and pollarding (cutting higher up, an example of Tilia cordata below in this thread) were once widespread practices of wood extraction. After cutting, the trees regenerated vegetatively from the stumps or trunks.

An alien plant species in its primary and secondary habitat. Nepeta racemosa occurs naturally in rocky steppes in the Lesser Caucasus and neighboring areas, such as near Lernapat in northern Armenia in this picture.

Many Armenian people collect wild edible plants. These are pickled stems of Chaerophyllum aureum that we received from a local man. This species belongs to Apiaceae, which includes poisonous plants similar to edible plants. Thus, collecting edible Apiaceae requires considerable botanical knowledge.

Iris paradoxa near Spitak, Armenia. It occurs here in a dry, open steppe with Kochia prostrata and Agropyron cristatum s.l. It is assumed that such steppes were widespread in Europe and northern and central Asia during the cold phases of the Pleistocene.

Quercus macranthera (Caucasian oak) is a remarkable tree. While other oaks are thermophilic and occur at low elevations, Quercus macranthera is found at high elevations in the Caucasus and Alborz. It occurs higher than the beech and often forms the alpine timberline.

Quercus iberica, Acer ibericum. None of these species occur on the Iberian Peninsula. Like many other species with this epithet, they occur in the Caucasus region and are named after the Kingdom of Iberia, which existed in the western Caucasus region in the Roman Period and the Early Middle Ages.

Arum megobrebi was described from NE Turkey and Georgia by Lobin et al. (2007), but also occurs in northern Armenia. It resembles the western European Arum maculatum, but it has an elongated, cylindrical spadix appendix, in contrast to the stipitate and clearly clavate appendix in A. maculatum.

Traditional management of temperate deciduous forests is still alive in northeastern Armenia: Forest grazing combined with tree coppicing and pollarding creates a fine landscape mosaic of forest and grasslands with a high diversity of plant species.

Phelypaea coccinea, a species from the Orobanchaceae family parasitizing on the roots of Centaurea. North-eastern Armenia.