Abstract
Georgia can be considered as a rich treasure of flora and fauna. The Georgia flora comprises 4100 species of vascular plants. The low-lying marshy lowlands of eastern Georgia are occupied by semidesert biomes with intermittent fragments of solicited desert. For this type of desert vegetation the presence of ephemeral organisms are typical. One of the fragments of the desert biome is represented by the communities of Nitraria schoberi, which are spread in Shida (inner) Kartli, Kartli, and Meskheti. One of the variants of the erosive desert is the vegetation covering the washed-away soil of the Iori river. It is in such places that Tulpa eichleri, a very rare endemic plant, grows. One of the main dominants of the semidesert biome is Artemisia fragans, which is widespread in eastern Georgia. In eastern Georgia, the steppe vegetation is spread a little higher than the semidesert (300–700 m). Due to anthropogenic influences the steppe is interspersed by the elements of forest—a dry, light forest and bush vegetation. The soil is black in some places and climate is dry subtropical with some features of continental climate; winter is rather dry and summer is hot. The fauna of Georgia comprises 109 species of mammals, 322 species of birds, 52 species of reptiles, 13 species of amphibians, and more than 120 species of freshwater and through passage and marine fish. This chapter provides a glimpse of Georgia’s faunal and floral treasure.
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Notes
- 1.
It is necessary to notice that the total area of a known Khosta yew-box grove (the Caucasian reserve, the Russian Federation) makes 300 hectares from which the box occupies no more than 73 ha
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Bondyrev, I., Davitashvili, Z., Singh, V. (2015). Ecosystems. In: The Geography of Georgia. World Regional Geography Book Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05413-1_13
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