Diverse Plant Life

Most Dry Grasslands expand due to human use as well as due to the influence of wild large mammals. Even in the Neolithic Age the woods served as grazing areas. Cattle fed on seeds, fruits and new growth: the trees grew thin and the area developed into an open, park-like landscape. From the Middle Ages on, woods were forced back because of the increasing human population. Steep sites or those with a thin soil layer were used for grazing or as meadows cut once a year. Over the centuries, this extensive use of the land led to highly bio-diverse grasslands rich in flowers.

The 20th century, however, brought about a fundamental change in the dynamics of the Steppes and Dry Grasslands, with a drop in the numbers of the traditionally grazing sheep, goats and cattle. Today, woods and undergrowth are spreading out in the open land areas. The afforestation of less productive meadows has also led to large scale-losses. The Steppes and Dry Grasslands that once characterised Eastern Austria shrunk to a few hundred hectares during the last decades.

The eastern part of Lower Austria belongs to the Pannonicum, an area characterised by its arid, warm climate. Although the climatic conditions favour the formation of dry vegetation, there are no climatically limited steppes in the Pannonicum. The dry grasses can establish themselves permanently only in places where the conditions for woods and undergrowth are especially unfavourable. Species which thrive on the barren locations have always been indigenous to these special locations or have immigrated from southern and eastern steppes.

Many plants are capable of adapting to the dry habitat. Xerophytes (species which tolerate aridity) are able to survive on small amounts of water. Scorzonera austriaca exhibits a wax covering, which reduces evaporation. Jurinea mollis and Carlina vulgaris are protected by a thick covering of hair or cuticles. Festuca sp. and Stipa sp. reduce evaporation by rolling up their leaves. The most well-adapted are Sedum spp., which only take up CO2 at night and are able to mostly keep their stomata closed during the dry hot days.

Another strategy for survival is to shift the vegetative or generative phase to time periods in which higher soil moisture prevails. Erophila verna uses this strategy to reach maturity in April and survive throughout the dry summer as seeds. Spring geophytes such as Ornithogalum pannonicum and Gagea pusilla also take advantage of the damp springtime and soak up moisture a bit later to survive the dry summer as a bulb.

Numerous characteristic species of the dry grasslands that once marked the landscape are on the Red List of endangered ferns and flowering plants and categorized as the most highly endangered. Some species, such as Artemisisa pancicii, Dracocephalum austriacum and Dianthus lumnitzeri, even had to be put into appendix II of the EU Habitats Directive.



Areas of Main Focus:
Nature Reserve Zeiserlberg (1)
Natural Monument Fehhaube-Kogelsteine (2)
Nature Reserve Mühlberg (3)
Nature Reserve Eichkogel (4)
Nature Reserve Glaslauterriegel-Heferlberg und Fuchsberg (5)
Nature Reserve Hundsheimer Berg (6)
Nature Reserve Braunsberg (7)
Schlossberg/Hainburg (8)
Nature Reserve Spitzerberg (9)
Königswarte-Hindlerberg/Berg (10)
Nature Reserve Goldberg (11)