The protected flora of long‐established cemeteries in Hungary: Using historical maps in biodiversity conservation

Abstract

The role of anthropogenically influenced habitats in conserving elements of the original wildlife has increased worldwide simultaneously with the disappearance of natural sites. Burial places are able to conserve original elements of the wildlife, and this fact has been known for at least a century. To this day, little is known about long‐time changes and the effect of long‐time management methods in cemeteries on the flora they harbor. The utility of historical maps in research focused on natural values, as well as in answering questions related to conservation was recently demonstrated, but the use of digitized historical maps in biodiversity research of the Carpathian Basin is very limited. In the present paper, we aimed to predict the conservation potential of long‐established and newly established cemeteries of Hungarian settlements with various population sizes based on the digitized maps of the 2nd Military Survey of the Austrian Empire (1819–1869), by categorizing cemeteries into 3 distinct (anthropogenic habitat, cemetery, or natural habitat) types. To build our models, we used records of the protected flora from Hungarian cemeteries, based on data of thematic botanical surveys of 991 cemeteries. Out of the surveyed cemeteries, 553 (56%) harbored protected plants, totaling 306.617 estimated individuals of 92 protected species, belonging to 28 plant families. These species represent 12% of the entire protected flora of Hungary. Hungarian cemeteries play a key role mainly in preserving steppe and dry grassland plant species. Long‐established and large cemeteries harbor more protected plant species than small and newly established ones. Human population size of the settlements correlated negatively with the number of protected species and individuals. Moreover, woodland cover and proportion of grassland also significantly positively affected the number of protected plant species in cemeteries.

Orchids of Azerbaijani Cemeteries

“…We studied burial grounds (Azerbaijani: m@zarlıq, hereafter cemeteries) regardless of their spatial dimension, position within settlements, or presence of built facilities. We surveyed 96 Azerbaijani cemeteries (Figure 1, Table A1) during 2018 (17)(18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27)(28)(29)(30) May by Molnár V., Löki, Mizsei and Süveges, and 28 June-4 July by Molnár V. and Szabó) and 2019 (29 April-6 May by Verbeeck, Duijnhouwer, Segers and Bobocea) and (31 May-6 June by Verbeeck, Duijnhouwer and Bradeanu). Most cemeteries were visited only once (90 and 3 cemeteries in May 2018 and in April 2019, respectively), but three cemeteries were visited in both years.…”

“…Although the orchid flora of cemeteries is globally rather poorly known, occurrences of orchids were published from Australian, Asian, and European burial places [20]. Based on previous knowledge on the occurrence and diversity of orchids in Turkish [21][22][23][24], Albanian [25] and central European [26] burial grounds, we predicted potential conservational importance of traditional Caucasian cemeteries. One of the main goals of our study was to search for Himantoglossum formosum, the rarest and perhaps the least known orchid of the Caucasian region [27].…”

To Care or Not to Care? Which Factors Influence the Distribution of Early-Flowering Geophytes at the Vienna Central Cemetery (Austria)

“…The small-scale mosaic of different habitat types and small structures, such as old walls, groups of trees, meadows, and water areas, make them a diverse environment for a wide range of species [7,8]. Their value as a biodiversity island within the transformed landscapes of cities is high [2,3,[9][10][11][12]. This is amplified by the often-old age of cemeteries compared to the surrounding built-up areas [3,7].…”

“…This service provisioning is quite substantial as in large cities there are usually several cemeteries, which together take up a substantial part of the total urban area (e.g., 30 cemeteries covering 1.3% of the urban area in Munich or 52 cemeteries covering 1.2% of the urban area in Vienna; [19,24]). Moreover, the fact that most of the cemeteries are scattered across the city makes them a valuable part of the green infrastructure [12,[25][26][27][28] and they also serve as habitat corridors for many species [8,9,19,29].…”

“…The designation of a species as a stinzen plant relates to a need for constant care to survive and is tied to a delimited area [35]. As these conditions of constant care are provided in cemeteries, they are important habitats for these plants [9,36].…”