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Tunisia

Thirteen Important Plant Areas (IPAs) have been identified in Tunisia, while eight other sites are known for their rich flora but require further investigation.

Tunisia lies in North Africa at the junction of the two basins that form the Mediterranean, between the Mashreq (the Arab East) and the Maghreb (the Arab West). The mountain ranges in the north and east of the country are well watered and are the eastern ends of the Tellian and Saharan Atlas. The arid high steppes are drained by oueds (wadis), and the semi-arid low steppes end at a flat coastal strip. The bioclimatic zones follow a rising gradient from south to north, from hyper-arid in the Saharan area to humid Mediterranean in the northern mountains.

Forests and shrub cover 5% of the land (reduced from 20% at the beginning of the 19th century), mainly in upland areas. They comprise stands of oaks, olive–mastic, pines and Sandarac gum trees. Steppes of esparto, white wormwood, Rhanterium suaveolens (a yellow daisy-like plant) or varieties of the shrub Haloxylon cover approximately 20% of the country.

The Tunisian flora contains 2162 species. Of these, 2103 are included in the three-volume Flore de Tunisie (Cuénod et al., 1954; Pottier-Alapetite, 1979, 1981). The remaining 59 species not mentioned in these volumes are additions by other authors. The most recent work on the nomenclature of Tunisian flora (Le Floc’h and Boulos, 2008) covers all taxa correctly or incorrectly attributed to Tunisia. According to the Ministry of the Environment and Sustainable Development, the Tunisian flora contains 1798 taxa. The number of national endemics is relatively low (71in total). There are 99 North African endemics shared with Algeria and 13 with Libya.

Thirteen Important Plant Areas (IPAs) have been identified in Tunisia, while eight other sites are known for their rich flora but require further investigation. One of the thirteen (Kroumirie) is made up of a dozen small independent sites that have been combined into a single IPA since they are all small-scale wetland habitats, such as peat bogs, ponds or temporary pools. The thirteen IPAs are essentially located in the north of the country so mostly have a subhumid to humid Mediterranean climate. Ten of them have an average elevation below or around 500m, whereas three (Jbel Zaghouan, Jbel Ghorra, Aïn Zana) are more clearly mountainous.

Wetland environments are well represented, making up more than half the IPAs, in the form of permanent lakes (Ichkeul), semi-permanent lakes (Majen Chitane, Majen Choucha, etc.), temporary pools (Garâa Sejenane, Majen el Ma, Sraï el Majen), marshes (Ichkeul), and peat bogs based on Sphagnum or Osmunda (Kroumirie) or bracken (Dar el Orbi). Although these sites are not particularly rich in national endemic or stenoendemic species (a large proportion of the endemics that occur in them is shared with neighbouring countries) they do contain most of the nationally or regionally threatened or rare habitats.

The Tunisian IPAs are also representative of the main forest and coastal habitat types of Tunisia. The most outstanding forest types are more or less protected, with Algerian oak and cork oak at Aïn Zana and Jbel Ghorra, olive-mastic with carob on Jbel Ichkeul, juniper at Toujane, and alder in the Oued Ziatine riparian forest. Coastal flora is represented on three IPAs, with the La Galite Archipelago and the Zembra and Zembretta National Park, both rich in rare species and species endemic to Tunisia or North Africa. Their flora and that of the coastal IPA of Sidi Ali el Mekki is particularly rich in endemics (Linaria cossonii, Malcolmia doumetiana, Limonium gougetianum and L. zembrae, and Silene barrattei).

Coordinating organisation:

• Institut National Agronomique de Tunisie

Contacts:

• Zeineb Ghrabi