V38W Dry disturbed sites with biennal pioneer vegetation

Description

Biennial pioneer vegetation of abandoned sites.

Protection

This habitat is not protected under the EU Habitat Directive.

Phytosociology i

• Helminthio echioidis-Melilotetum albae

Relations with other habitat types

These communities, dominated by taller, biennial or short-lived perennial plants ultimately outcompeting V37W, occupy wetter and less grazed situations than the thistle-dominated rest of V38, and have a higher proportion of neophytes. Nowadays widespread in dumping sites and turned over soils around human infrastructure, in pre-Neolithic times this vegetation (as well as the rest of V38) occurred mostly in places where nutrients collected across large areas were concentrated to a certain degree, such as deposits of debris brought by floods or avalanches, resting spots of large animals, roostings of birds or the surroundings of their breeding colonies (as pointed out under N316), generating soils more eutrophic than those possibly deriving from the burning of local vegetation or the sun-enhanced mineralisation of litter in clearings, as happens in R57Z. In the absence of new disturbances, more robust, light-hogging plants eventually prevail, leading to V39 communities.

Known occurrences and potential area of occupancy of the habitat type in the study region.