Contribution to the Study of the Greek Insular Flora: Antikythera and the Islets Around Kythera

Abstract

The Kythera-Antikythera island chain is one of the most interesting areas of Greece, from a floristic and biogeographical point of view. It is considered as the remnant of an old landbridge which connected Western Crete with Southern Peloponnisos. The whole area is dominated by limestone cliffs, a biotope where many Greek and Aegean floristic elements find refuge. The island chain consists of 3 main, inhabited islands, Elafonissos, Kythera and Antikythera, and a number of small and uninhabited islets (Fig. 1). Elafonissos and Kythera are considered floristically well known (see Tzanoudakis & Panitsa 1994 for references), so we focused our efforts on the floristic exploration of the islets, which remained quite unexplored, and also to Antikythera which is the most remote and isolated among the larger ones. The latter is included in “Flora Kytherea” of Greuter and Rechinger (1967), but the floristic information are based on collections made by the authors and Prof. Phitos, during the same season (first half of May) of the same year (1964).