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1914–2014: A revised worldwide catalogue of cushion plants 100 years after Hauri and Schröter

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Abstract

Cushion plants have long fascinated botanists for their ability to cope with extreme environments in most mountains and arctic regions of the world. One century ago, a first worldwide catalogue of species forming cushions was published by Hauri and Schröter (Bot Jahrb Syst Pflanzengesch Pflanzengeogr 50:618–656, 1914). Here, we defined a simplified typology of cushion plants and updated the worldwide catalogue of cushion species, along with information on their geographic distribution. This compilation was based on available information in floras and catalogues but also in efloras and virtual encyclopedias, which were screened using automated database queries. We established a list of 1,309 cushion-forming species distributed in 272 genera and 63 families of angiosperms. Compact cushions are represented by 678 species, among which 587 species exhibit a hemispherical shape, and 91 species exhibit a flat to mat shape. We found 398 species forming non-compact hemispherical cushions. The list of cushion species has significantly increased since Hauri and Shröter, due to the description of new species, updated regional inventories, and improved access to electronic databases. Uncertainties in the delineation of the cushion life form are discussed, notably for non-compact growth forms. A website has been launched to display the catalogue and enable a collaborative improvement of the database (http://www.cushionplants.eu/). The distribution of the species is presented on the basis of the world geographical scheme for recording plant distributions and global biodiversity information facility data. This catalogue will serve as a reference database for further analyses on the biogeography and evolutionary history of cushion plants and arctico-alpine biotas.

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Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to the following persons: Dr. Ihsan Al-Shehbaz at Missouri Botanical Garden (Brassicaceae), Dr. Richard Winkworth (NZ cushion plants), Jean-Louis Latil (Cactaceae), Pr Farideh Attar (thorny cushions of Iran and Afghanistan), Mireille Basile and Cristina Roquet for helping out with some database checkings and additions. The authors are also grateful to the reviewers for the helpful comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratoire d’Ecologie Alpine, CNRS UMR 5553, Université Joseph Fourier, Grenoble 1, France

    Serge Aubert, Florian Boucher, Sébastien Lavergne, Julien Renaud & Philippe Choler

  2. Station Alpine Joseph Fourier, UMS CNRS 3370, Université Joseph Fourier, Grenoble 1, France

    Serge Aubert & Philippe Choler

  3. Université Joseph Fourier, LECA, Bât D, BP 53, 38041, Grenoble Cedex 9, France

    Serge Aubert

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  1. Serge Aubert
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  4. Julien Renaud
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Correspondence to Serge Aubert.

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Aubert, S., Boucher, F., Lavergne, S. et al. 1914–2014: A revised worldwide catalogue of cushion plants 100 years after Hauri and Schröter. Alp Botany 124, 59–70 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00035-014-0127-x

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