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публикации о музее-заповеднике «Кижи»

The research made in 1983–2000 revealed 335 species of plants on the Island of Kizhi. Forty of them are rare species. Sixteen of them are listed in the Red Book of Endangered Species of the Republic of Karelia.

Relatively mild climate, the diverse relief and high quality soil of this site provide the uni-que diversity of the plant life in this part of Karelia. The vegetation life of the islands was not always as it is today. It was mostly tundra vegetation that grew on the island after the deg-laciation. Later on it was replaced by thin birch forest and then by mixed and coniferous forests. 4,500–7,500 years ago the climate was warmer and more humid than it is at present.

At that time coniferous and mixed forests with considerable admixtures of broad-leaved species (small-leaved linden, elm, European black alder, European hazel and oak) prevailed in Zaonezhie. Lindens and elms still grow here. They are considered relics of early vegetation. Nowadays species of trees that occur on the islands are typical for temperate zone. They grow side by side with grassland vegetation common in these latitudes. There are such spring-blooming herbaceous perennials on the Island of Kizhi as Halleri corydalis, European wood anemone, medicinal lungwort, primrose and gagea. These flowers blanket the ground of the island with different colors in early spring. In summer they are replaced by other species.

There frequently occur a tansy, a wood geranium, timothy grass, cock’s-foot grass, a winter cress, meadow grass, a Greek-valerian polemonium, a mullein, a silvery cinquefoil, a bushy cinquefoil, a brown knapweed, a scabiose centaury, a meadow vetchling and a cow vetch on dry meadows of the island. On wet meadows there is an evan’s-root, a bitter nightshade, a water forgetmenot, European meadowsweet and different kinds of sedge. A buckbean, a stitchwort, a marsh cinquefoil, a wild calla, a marsh holy rose, a Chamaedaphne, mud sedge, cotton grass, a bog crane, some moss species, common rush and different kinds of horsetail grow in swamps.

The climate became drier about 4–5 thousand years ago. It caused the steppe and forest-steppe zones to the north. Some plant species of these zones (sand pink, spike speed-well, dragonhead, creeping thyme, common origanum, a meadow succisa and a nodding catchfly) still grow on the cliffs. Some Siberian species whose areas of distribution are situated beyond the Ural Mountains also migrated to the west, to the shores of Onego Lake. They are flowering raspberry, atragene, watercress, bee larkspur, baneberry, honeysuckle and stu-pefying chervil.[текст с сайта музея-заповедника "Кижи": http://kizhi.karelia.ru]

As soon as this territory was reclaimed by people the diversity of the local flora was enriched by some plants connected with human activity. There are about 110 of them in Zaonezhie. They are such very well known weeds as stinging nettle, a chickweed satin flower, a common burdock, a perennial ryegrass, a greater celandine, a pulmonary gentian, garden sorrel, a Canadian fleabane, a milfoil and others.

Bird species of the Kizhi skerries is the subject of poster №7.