Vascular flora of Milan Malpensa airport (Lombardy, Italy). Part I: checklist

Abstract

Airport areas have, among flight infrastructures, large green spaces which, not having production purposes, are managed through interventions of minimal disturbance on habitats, with potentially positive effects on the conservation of biodiversity. The checklist of the vascular flora of the airport of Milan Malpensa is here presented. This airport extends for 12.44 km2 in the southwestern portion of the province of Varese (Lombardy, Italy) in the administrative districts of Cardano al Campo, Casorate Sempione, Ferno, Lonate Pozzolo, Samarate, Somma Lombardo and Vizzola Ticino. The collection campaigns were carried out between August 2010 and September 2018. The specimens collected are now kept in the herbarium facility of the Natural History Museum of Milan (MSNM). The floristic list was organized following the arrangement and the nomenclature of the recently published Italian flora checklists. It includes 395 taxa of specific and subspecific rank (9.35% of the entire flora of Lombardy) belonging to 247 genera and 72 families. The native taxa are 318, while the alien ones are 77. The native/aliens ratio is comparable to the one calculated at the regional level (4.10 vs. 4.42). The endemic contingent includes two taxa: Centaurea nigrescens subsp. pinnatifida, Italian endemic, and Euphrasia cisalpina, endemic to the Alps. The Malpensa airport is still the only site confirmed at the national level for Lepidium heterophyllum and, at the regional level, for Festuca muralis and Euphrasia cisalpina. The ecological characteristics and the data analysis will be discussed in a second contribution.