Botanical diversity in the environs of David Garedja monastery and its conservation

Author: Ana Kvlividze
Keywords: David garedja, diversity, flora, conservation
Annotation:

David Gareja Monastery Complex is one of the ancient religious and cultural centers of Georgia. It is situated in Sagarejo Municipality. Since October 24, 2007 the David Gareja complex has been included in the UNESCO list of the world’s remarkable sights. Besides the cultural value, the David Gareja complex territory is noteworthy for its diversity of habitats and vegetation cover. Here steppes, semi-deserts, halophytic plants, bunch grass steppes and fragments of sibljak and etc. are presented. Feather grass, various graminifolious and herbaceous plants should be considered as typical and main vegetation cover of the site. The feather grass valleys are mainly composed of Stipa tirsa Stev., and Stipa pennata L. The fields of feather grass and various herbaceous plants are mainly made of Stipa tirsa Stev. and etc. Among the graminifolious plants the most distinguished are Bothriochloa ischaemum (L.) Keng., Festuca sulcata (Hack.) Nym., Koeleria cristata (L.) Pers., Koeleria gracilis Pers., In the David Gareja areas we can immediately observe unique representatives of dendroflora, namely two species of a nettle tree - Celtis caucasica Willd., C. glabrata Stev. ex Planch.; two species of wild pear - Pyrus salicifolia Pall., P. georgica Kuthatheladz etc. In the David Gareja areas there are such significant tuberous, bulbous and rhizome plants as Bellevalia speciosa Woronow, Crocus adamii J. Gay, Iris iberica Hoffm., I. caucasica Hoffm., etc. Here we meet the endemic of Georgia, the sage of Gareja - Salvia gareji Troitzk., the classical site of which is the David Gareja territory. Among the halophytes of the David Gareja Monastery territory the most distinguished genera are: Petrosimonia, Suaeda and etc. The best place for ex-situ conservation is the conservation section of the Tbilisi Botanical Garden, where the above mentioned plants will be planted and observation on their development and phenology monitoring will be carried out. After fulfilling all the above said we will return the plants back to their natural habitats.

Lecture files:

დავით-გარეჯის მონასტრის მიდამოების ფლორა და მცენარეულობის მრავალფეროვნება და კონსერვაცია [ka]