Forest sites and forest types on rendzinas in Poland

The article discusses the relationship between rendzinas and types of forest sites and plant communities in lowland, upland and mountain areas in Poland. Rendzinas as soils of forest sites play an important role in the uplands of southern Poland. In mountain areas, their preponderance is limited to the area of the Pieniny and the Western Tatras. The site-forming role of rendzinas in the upland areas depends mainly on geomorphological conditions. Typical rendzinas generally form eutrophic sites of multi-species oak-hornbeam forests, fertile beech forests and thermophilous beech forests. Rendzinas with lithological discontinuities usually create poorer form sites of mixed deciduous forests, which correspond to floristically poorer phytocenoses of acidophilous deciduous forests. In mountain areas, the climate and geomorphological processes form the zonation of vegetation and rendzinas. In vertical layout sites, the rendzinas change from fertile sites of fir and beech forests, through mesotrophic mixed forests sites, to spruce forest on limestone in the upper montane zone.