Abstract

GARCILLAN, Pedro P.; LEON DE LA LUZ, José Luis; REBMAN, Jon P.  and  DELGADILLO, José. Naturalized non-native plants of Baja California peninsula, Mexico. Bot. sci [online]. 2013, vol.91, n.4, pp.461-475. ISSN 2007-4476.

We present a comprehensive inventory of naturalized non-native flora of the Baja California peninsula. As a starting point, we used the list of species referred to Baja California peninsula by Espinosa-García et al. (2000) in his database Malezas Introducidas en México, and then exhaustively reviewed the scientific bibliography for floristic flora and vegetation publications on various parts and the entire peninsula. We eliminated those reported plant taxa that lack specimens deposited in herbaria. Casual species (waifs) or species only found as cultivated plants were not included. We analyzed their geographic origin, life form, life cycle, and invasive status. We found 233 naturalized non-native taxa on the Baja California peninsula belonging to 230 species, 149 genera and 37 families. Poaceae has almost one-third of the total species (31%), followed by Asteraceae (13%), Brassicaceae (8%), and Chenopodiaceae (5%). The majority of the non-native plants are of Mediterranean and Euroasiatic origin (42%). Herb is the dominant life form (91%) and only 6% are trees and 3% are shrubs. Most species are annuals (54%), while 34% are perennial species. We identified 18 species (8% of the total) as highly invasive species in the Baja California peninsular region.

Keywords : Baja California; flora; invasive plants; non-native plants.