Floristic diversity and vegetation analysis of riparian and aquatic plants of the canals in the Sohag Governorate, Egypt.

This paper analyzes the five elements of vegetation: floristic composition, lifespan, life form, chorology, and species distribution of the riparian and aquatic flora of canals in the Sohag Governorate of Egypt. The riparian vegetation included 126 taxa belonging to 35 families and 95 genera. Poaceae, Fabaceae and Asteraceae were the dominant plant families (50.00% of the total number of the plant taxa). Annuals claimed 57.94% of all plant taxa, and 40.48% were perennials. Therophytes and hemicryptophytes were the predominant life forms of riparian taxa. Monoregional and pleuriregional taxa dominated the vegetation along the canals of the Sohag Governorate, both with 29 species or 23.02% of all identified taxa. Biregional taxa accounted for 20.63% of all taxa. There were 11.11% of cosmopolitan and 11.91% of indigenous taxa to the tropical areas worldwide. Plants from the Palaeotropical Kingdom constituted 8.73% of the riparian plant taxa. Plants originally distributed over the Mediterranean floristic region dominated in the canal riparian areas of the studied area, with 61 taxa or 48.41%. Furthermore, this study identified 41 taxa of aquatic plants from 21 genera and 16 families that were free-floating, rooted and floating, or submerged plants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]