Contribution to the "Atlas of the Russian Flora": Twelve local floras of European Russia

Abstract Background The purpose of this dataset is to deliver to a wider audience in the form of GBIF-mediated data vast floristic materials collected by the author across various localities of European Russia from 2001-2019 (Arkhangelsk, Tver, Vladimir, Tula, Lipetsk, Voronezh Oblasts, Krasnodar Krai, City of Moscow and Komi Republic). Taxonomic data on vascular plants for ten locations were mobilised from the papers and technical reports published in Russian and standardised. Floristic treatments for two locations (Yasnaya Polyana and Tsaritsyno) have never been published before. New information The newly-prepared dataset includes 5,309 species records, i.e. one species record per each local flora. These are either native or alien (fully naturalised and casual) species. All records within one local flora have the same centroid coordinates and coordinate uncertainty in metres. Floristic inventories from the following locations were mobilised: 01. Ustya, Arkhangelsk Oblast (543 species, 1,500 km2); 02. Zaseki, Tula Oblast (593 species, 60 km2); 03. Polibino, Lipetsk Oblast (553 species, 70 km2); 04. Khrenovoye, Voronezh Oblast (665 species, 200 km2); 05. Troyeruchitsa, Tver Oblast (501 species, 10 km2); 06. Man-Pupu-Ner, Komi Republic (182 species, ca. 300 km2); 07. Middle Lyaga, Komi Republic (143 species, ca. 300 km2); 08. Utrish, Krasnodar Krai (933 species, 195 km2); 09. Yasnaya Polyana, Tula Oblast (236 species, 2.2 km2); 10. Bogolyubovsky Lug, Vladimir Oblast (289 species, 1.7 km2); 11. Tsaritsyno, City of Moscow (359 species, 5.3 km2); 12. Patakino, Vladimir Oblast (312 species, 1.1 km2). According to the GBIF taxonomic backbone, the dataset covers 1,806 species, 669 genera and 127 families of tracheophytes.


Introduction
For the last 20 years, the author thoroughly studied under various circumstances vascular plants in several locations across European Russia. These contributions include twelve local floras -five places of summer field trips of Lomonosov Moscow State University students (Ustya, Zaseki, Polibino, Khrenovoye and Utrish) and seven locations in legallyprotected areas (Man-Pupu-Ner and Middle Lyaga in Pechoro-Ilych Reserve, Troyeruchitsa, Yasnaya Polyana, Bogolyubovsky Lug, Tsarirsyno and Patakino). This is a step towards the "Atlas of the Russian Flora" currently prepared under my supervision.

Ustya
This local flora covers the largest area ca. 1,500 km . It is situated in the taiga zone (boreal evergreen conifer forests) along the southern border of Arkhangelsk Oblast. The primary mobilised source (Seregin and Goryainova 2003) included 544 numbered species. Five species known only from Chadroma, a distant locality on the NW corner of the studied area, were excluded to reduce coordinate uncertainty from 38,000 m to a reasonable 21,000 m. Four unnumbered Pilosella hybrids were included into the dataset, which finally lists 543 entries.
The Ustya flora is well documented by vouchers deposited at MWG Herbarium (Herbarium of Biogeography Department, Faculty of Geography, Lomonosov Moscow State University), including 232 specimens collected by the author in 2001 and 149 specimens in 2002 (collector's numbers from N-1 to N-380), as well as earlier collections by the department's staff. Unfortunately, there are no digitisation activities in this Herbarium at the moment.

Zaseki
This local flora (60 km ) was studied around the permanent camping site of the summer field practice of Faculty of Soil Science, Lomonosov Moscow State University. It is situated in the broadleaved forest zone (temperate deciduous hardwood forests) in Shchekino District, Tula Oblast. Two published sources were mobilised (Seregin 2011, Seregin 2015 which include 520 species discovered from 2005-2010 and an additional 73 species from 2011-2013. The centroid of the area is located in the camping site with proposed coordinate uncertainty 8,000 m. The Zaseki flora is poorly documented by vouchers with the focus on common plants intensively collected by the students. The main herbarium set by the author is deposited at MHA Herbarium (Skvortsov Herbarium of Tsitsin Main Botanical Garden, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow). Only 15% of Eastern Europe holdings of this herbarium have been digitised so far (Seregin and Stepanova 2020); therefore, related occurrences from the MHA GBIF-mediated dataset (Seregin and Stepanova 2021) include only 85 specimens of 76 species collected from 2005-2013.

Polibino
This local flora (70 km ) was also studied around the permanent camping site of the summer field practice of Faculty of Soil Science, Lomonosov Moscow State University. It is situated in the forest-and-steppe zone (an ecotone between temperate deciduous hardwood forests and dry temperate grasslands) in Dankov District, Lipetsk Oblast along the Don River. Two published sources were mobilised (Seregin 2011, Seregin 2015 which include 506 species discovered from 2005-2010 supplemented by 50 species found from 2011-2013. The centroid of the area is located in the camping site with proposed coordinate uncertainty 7,000 m. Three misidentified species from the first source (Seregin 2011) were excluded from the dataset, which finally lists 553 entries.
The Polibino flora is unevenly documented by vouchers with focus on common plants and species of grasslands intensively collected by the students. The main herbarium set by the author is deposited at MW Herbarium (Herbarium of Lomonosov Moscow State University). This Herbarium is completely digitised at the moment and fully available online (Seregin 2018), but related occurrences from the MW GBIF-mediated dataset (Seregin 2021b) include only 331 specimens of 256 species collected in this area from 2005-2013.

Khrenovoye
This local flora (200 km

Troyeruchitsa
This local flora (10 km ) was studied within the borders of the Troyeruchitsa State Nature Reserve and three adjacent settlements. It is situated in the taiga zone (boreal evergreen conifer forests) in Ostashkov District, Tver Oblast along the eastern coast of Lake Seliger.

Utrish
This local flora (195 km ) stretches along the coastal zone of Abrau Peninsula from Sukko to Yuzhnaya Ozereyevka. It includes the Navagir Range, the westernmost spur of the Caucasus in Anapa and Novorossiysk Districts, Krasnodar Krai. The area shelters the relic ecosystems of arid sub-Mediterranean forests.
The first detailed floristic data on the flora of the Abrau Peninsula were published by Flerov and Flerov (1926). They indicated 991 species for the Anapa -Novorossiysk coastal area with 654 records documented by specimens, but their collections were entirely lost. Some of their records are doubtful and believed to be erroneous according to the recent studies of vascular flora of the NW Transcaucasus (Zernov 2000). Later, the flora of the Abrau Peninsula was studied during individual trips of a number of botanists, but it has never received special interest. Zernov (2000) reported 1,461 species for the whole territory of the North-Western Transcaucasus from Anapa to Tuapse (ca. 5,100 km ), based on herbarium specimens.

Yasnaya Polyana
This small local flora (2.2 km ) was studied within the borders of the Leo Tolstoy memorial estate. It is situated in the broadleaved forest zone (temperate deciduous hardwood 2 2 2 forests) in Shchekino District, Tula Oblast. The list of vascular plants from this location was never published as either a paper or a technical report. Currently, it includes 236 species recorded by the author in 2014 and 2017. The centroid of the flora is located near Tolstoy's tomb with proposed coordinate uncertainty 1,000 m.
The Yasnaya Polyana flora was not documented by vouchers during the author's field surveys, but some specimens from this location, collected by other botanists, can be found in TUL and MW GBIF-mediated datasets. For instance, 710 digitised specimens of 264 wild and cultivated species from Yasnaya Polyana are deposited at TUL Herbarium Seregin 2020, Svetasheva and and 67 digitised specimens of 57 species are available at MW Herbarium (Seregin 2021b).

Bogolyubovsky Lug
This small local flora (1.7 km ) was studied within the borders of the historical landscape complex "Bogolyubovsky Meadow -Church of the Intercession on the Nerl", a site with a legal status of the regional protected area. This is a large managed meadow, situated in the flood plain of the Klyazma River in the ecotone zone of mixed broadleaved and conifer forest near Bogolyubovo, Vladimir Oblast. The list of vascular plants from this location was never published as a paper, but was available online as a technical report (Seregin 2010). This report with 289 species, recorded by the author in 2010, was mobilised.
The Bogolyubovsky Lug flora was poorly documented by vouchers during the author's field surveys with only 11 specimens of ten species available in the MW Herbarium dataset (Seregin 2021b). The author's data from all Vladimir Oblast localities collected from 1999-2020 were fully integrated into a recently updated grid dataset (Seregin 2021a, Seregin 2021c) with coordinate uncertainty 7,000 m, an average distance between a grid square centroid and a grid square corner. The centroid of the Bogolyubovsky Lug flora is located in the middle of the actual area with proposed coordinate uncertainty 1,100 m.

Tsaritsyno
This small local flora (5.3 km ) was studied within the borders of the Tsaritsyno Museum-Estate, a site with a legal status of the regional protected area (as part of Tsaritsyno Nature Reserve). This is a large old park with a number of ponds, large lawns and managed meadows in the Southern Administrative Okrug, City of Moscow, situated in the ecotone zone of mixed broadleaved and conifer forests. The list of vascular plants from this location was never published as either a paper or a technical report. Currently, it includes 359 species recorded by the author in 2019.
The Tsaritsyno flora was not documented by herbarium vouchers during the author's field surveys, although a dataset of georeferenced photos made in 2019 was uploaded on iNaturalist. Thereby, photo vouchers of 773 observations of 337 species are available on GBIF (Ueda 2021) in line with the "Flora of Russia" initiative ).

Patakino
This small local flora (1.1 km ) was studied within the borders of the Patakinskaya Grove Nature Sanctuary, a site with a legal status of regional protected area. The area includes a broadleaved forest on a steep south-faced slope of the Klyazma River valley and an adjacent birch forest. The sanctuary is situated in the ecotone zone of mixed broadleaved and conifer forests near Patakino, Kameshkovsky District, Vladimir Oblast. The list of vascular plants from this location was never published as a paper, but was available online as a technical report (Seregin 2013). I mobilised this report with 312 species recorded in 2010.
The Patakino flora was poorly documented by vouchers during the author's field surveys with only 20 specimens of 19 species available in MW Herbarium dataset (Seregin 2021b). The author's data were fully integrated into a recently updated Vladimir Oblast grid dataset with coordinate uncertainty 7,000 m (see section "10. Bogolyubovsky Lug" for the details). The centroid of the Patakino flora is located in the middle of the actual area with proposed coordinate uncertainty 1,000 m.

General description
Purpose: The purpose of this dataset (Seregin 2021d) is to deliver to a wider audience in the format of GBIF-mediated data vast floristic materials collected by the author across various localities of European Russia from 2001-2019. First of all, I selected for this dataset two thoroughly surveyed floras from small protected areas of Vladimir Oblast which have more precise georeferences than in the recently updated grid dataset (Seregin 2021a). For years, these two lists were available only as online technical reports. Floristic inventories of two other legally protected sites (Yasnaya Polyana in Tula Oblast and Tsaritsyno in the City of Moscow) were never published before, although these locations are popular amongst tourists. Another eight checklists have been published earlier in Russian, either as journal articles (Zaseki, Polibino, Khrenovoye, Troyeruchitsa, Man-Pupu-Ner and Middle Lyaga) or as chapters in thematic collections of research papers, a common genre of botanical writing in Russia (Ustya and Utrish).
Taxonomic data from these sources were mobilised, standardised and finally published as a GBIF-mediated dataset. It includes 5,309 species records (one species record per each local flora). These are either native or alien (fully naturalised and casual) species. Cultivated species were not recorded by the author. All records within one local flora have the same centroid coordinates and position accuracy (i.e. coordinate uncertainty in metres). See Table 1 for the details.

Additional information:
The nomenclature of the dataset follows the original mobilised sources. As a rule, they were based upon standard regional floras and checklists. Seregin and Goryainova (2003) followed Tzvelev (2000) for the Ustya local flora, Arkhangelsk Oblast. Seregin (2014) followed Lavrenko et al. (1995) for two local floras in Komi Republic. Both Seregin (2020) for the Troyeruchitsa local flora, Tver Oblast and Seregin (2013) for the Patakino local flora, Vladimir Oblast followed the nomenclature in Seregin (2012). Suslova et al. (2015) largely followed the standard flora by Zernov (2006) for the Utrish local flora, Krasnodar Krai. (2015) did not provide any general taxonomic reference, but their backbone was synchronised with a standard flora of Vladimir Oblast by Seregin (2012). The same reference was used for the unpublished checklist of the Yasnaya Polyana local flora. A taxonomic backbone for the unpublished checklist of the Tsaritsyno local flora, City of Moscow was downloaded in 2019 from iNaturalist, which follows POWO taxonomy (POWO 2021).

Geographic coverage
Description: Twelve local floras are situated in various places across European Russia. Their locations are given on the map (Fig. 1). Some additional information for each locality is given in the introduction.
Brief general information about the studied areas is given in Table 1. Typical plant communities of the locations are given in the series of photographs (Figs 2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13).             basisOfRecord The specific nature of the data record -a subtype of the dcterms:type. A constant ("HumanObservation").
informationWithheld Additional information that exists, but that has not been shared in the given record.
A variable. For example, "Associated ecological data and frequency estimate", "Associated ecological data, frequency estimate and a year of the record", "Voucher reference". continent The name of the continent in which the location occurs. A constant ("Europe"). country The name of the country or major administrative unit in which the location occurs.
A constant ("Russian Federation"). countryCode The standard code for the country in which the location occurs. A constant ("RU"). stateProvince The name of the next smaller administrative region than country (state, province, canton, department, region etc.) in which the location occurs. A variable (for example, "Krasnodar Krai"). locality The specific description of the place. This term may contain information modified from the original to correct perceived errors or standardise the description. A variable (twelve options: "Bogolyubovsky Lug", "Khrenovoye", "Man-Pupu-Ner", "Middle Lyaga", "Patakino", "Polibino", "Troyeruchitsa", "Tsaritsyno", "Ustya", "Utrish", "Yasnaya Polyana", "Zaseki"). decimalLatitude The geographic latitude (in decimal degrees, using the spatial reference systemgiven in geodeticDatum) of the geographic centre of a location. A variable (latitude of a local flora centroid). decimalLongitude The geographic longitude (in decimal degrees, using the spatial reference systemgiven in geodeticDatum) of the geographic centre of a location. A variable (longitude of a local flora centroid).
geodeticDatum The ellipsoid, geodetic datum or spatial reference system (SRS) upon which the geographic coordinates given in decimalLatitude and decimalLongitude are based.
A constant ("WGS84"). kingdom The full scientific name of the kingdom in which the taxon is classified. A constant ("Plantae"). phylum The full scientific name of the phylum or division in which the taxon is classified. A constant ("Tracheophyta").

genus
The full scientific name of the genus in which the taxon is classified. A variable (for example, "Scirpus"). specificEpithet The name of the first or species epithet of the scientificName. A variable (for example, "sylvaticus"). infraspecificEpithet The name of the lowest or terminal infraspecific epithet of the scientificName, excluding any rank designation. A variable (for example, "ucrainicum"). taxonRank The taxonomic rank of the most specific name in the scientificName. A variable (four options: "species", "subspecies", "genus", "speciesAggregate"). taxonomicStatus The status of the use of the scientificName as a label for a taxon. A constant ("accepted"). identificationQualifier A brief phrase or a standard term to express the determiner's doubts about the Identification. A variable (two options: "sensu lato", "sensu stricto").

Acknowledgements
The study was supported by the grant from Russian Science Foundation (project # 21-77-20042) for georeferencing, data procession and publication of the GBIF-mediated dataset. The author thanks Ministry of Science and Higher Education of Russia for support of CCU "Herbarium MBG RAS" (i.e. MHA Herbarium).