Floristic of climbing plants of Parque Estadual das Fontes do Ipiranga, São Paulo, SP State, Brazil

Abstract

The Parque Estadual das Fontes do Ipiranga (PEFI) is one of the few vegetacional remnants in the great São Paulo. The vegetation is a mosaic of Atlantic Rainforest with elements of seasonal semideciduos forest. The climbing plants are an important part of vegetation because of its floristic diversity and adaptations. For the study of climbing plants herbarium collections were examined and complemented with fied studies every two weeks during 18 months.  The study recorded the occurrence at 187 species of climbing plants, distributed 109 in spp. and 32 families. The richest families were Fabaceae (21) spp., Bignoniaceae (20) spp. e Asteraceae (20) spp. The genera more important were Mikania and Passiflora, with 12 species each. Five new occurrences of climbing plants species at were recorded. These results suggest that the species richness of climbing plants in PEFI is comparable to the numbers found in great areas of continuous vegetation and indeed higher than the numbers found earlier in similar areas. The high climbing plant diversity found in PEFI, an urban preserve in the city of São Paulo, reinforces the necessity to reavaluate the importance of this plant category for the forest communities.