A Floristic Study of the Northern Slope of Bahar Mountain Region, North Khorasan Province, Iran

Bahar Mountain is located in North Khorasan Province. The northern slope of this area, with an area of about ten thousand hectares, is studied in this research. This study deals with the identification of the flora of the region from years 2019 to 2021. Plant specimens were collected consecutively during growing seasons and were identified and kept in the herbarium of Kharazmi University (T). In total, 215 taxa were collected, which include 156 genera and 49 families, of which, one species, one genus, and one family belong to non-vascular plants and 214 species, 155 genera, and 48 families belong to the seed plants. Fabaceae and Asteraceae families are shown to be the largest families in the region with 21 and 20 taxa, respectively. The genera Astragalus with 12 species, Allium with 6 species, and Acanthophyllum and Bromus genera each with four species are found to be the largest genera in the region. Among the examined taxa, hemicryptophytes have the highest percentage of biological forms among the plants studied with 36%, which is in accordance with the cold and mountainous climate of the region. In addition, six taxa (2.8%) are found to be endemic to Iran and 16 taxa (7.4%) are included in the IUCN list. In total, 70% of the studied taxa belong to the Irano-Turanian region.