The vascular flora of the Maltese Islands

Abstract

The flora of the Maltese Islands comprises approximately 1,100 indigenous, archaeophytic and naturalised alien species and approximately 700 casual alien species. The most represented families are the Poaceae, Asteraceae and the Fabaceae. Life forms are predominantly therophytes or hemicryptophytes whilst most indigenous perennials are characterised by adaptations characteristic of xerophytes. The proportion of endemics is relatively low (2%), compared to that of other Mediterranean islands, and this may be a consequence of the high human population density (>1,500 persons km-2). Most endemics have only been subject to taxonomic and distributional studies and knowledge of their ecology is lacking. Ongoing work suggests that one of the endemics, Helichrysum melitense, has very low rates of reproductive success.