The Plant Communities of the Class in Sicily

A syntaxonomical revision of the class for the Sicilian territory is provided. This syntaxon gathers the ephemeral herbaceous hygrophilous plant communities linked to periodically submerged soils, widely distributed in the European, circum-Mediterranean and Macaronesian territories. Within this class, two orders are recognized, , with a prevalently Mediterranean distribution, and chiefly occurring in the central-European and Atlantic territories, with scattered and marginal occurrence in the Mediterranean area. The order in Sicily is represented by four alliances, i.e., , , and , while within three alliances can be recognized, namely , and . Overall, 32 plant communities are recognized, 11 of which are described for the first time. Each higher rank syntaxa and related associations are examined from a nomenclatural, floristic, ecological and chorological point of view. In particular, the associations were processed using cluster analysis in order to highlight the correlations between them. Regarding the floristic aspects, a checklist of the species occurring in the phytosociological relevés is provided, as well as a new combination concerning , a critical species of the Sicilian flora, is proposed.