Important Plant Areas of Armenia

Armenia is a small mountainous country in the Caucaus Ecoregion – one of the planet’s biodiversity hotspots. 77% of the country’s territory lies between 1000 and 2500 m a.s.l. Armenia’s highest point is at the top of Mountain Aragats (4090m).

Habitats

The habitat diversity of the country is  remarkable – with its semideserts, steppes, arid open forests, meadows, forests, various wetland habitats etc.

Plant diversity

Within its area of only 30,000 km2 the country has a very rich and diverse flora including 3800 vascular plant species, 144 of which are Armenian endemics: Ornithogalum gabrielianae, Pyrus gergerana, Tragopogon armeniacus, Sonchus araraticus, Scrophularia takhtajanii, Thlaspi zangezuricum and others

IPAs

32 Important Plant Areas have been identified in Armenia. 22 of them contain or overlap the state protected areas and a community managed protected landscape. About 60% of Armenia’s protected areas are covered by the IPA network. The IPAs of Armenia include all the diversity of main habitat types, characteristic to the country and contain populations of about 80% of threatened plant species of Armenian flora. According to preliminary data 26 of the total 32 IPAs overlap with Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs).

Rich flora

The territory of Armenia belongs to one of the world’s centres of origin of cultivated plants and it forms part of one of the most ancient areas of origin and development of agriculture, where donors and progenitors of many cultivated plants have survived in a great number of forms. So, the genetic diversity of crop wild relatives is one of the important characteristics of local flora. 452 species (almost 12% of the flora) are in the red data book of Armenia.

Complex relief, diversity of soils and climate conditions, geological history and other factors have conditioned such a floristic richness. Armenia’s territory is located on the junction of two sharply different floristic provinces: dry Armeno-Iranian, which belongs to the Ancient Mediterranean floristic subkingdom and temperate-humid Caucasian province of Boreal subkingdom of Holarctis.