干旱区生态环境知识资源中心

The objective of this research was to prepare a floristic list of the tropical dry forest in Baja California Peninsula and to delimit its coverage. This forest covers 3,325 km(2) in the mountainous southernmost part of the peninsula; this community is the driest version of its type in Mexico. After decades of fieldwork, the representation of the flora in the herbarium of the Centro de lnvestigaciones Biologicas is almost complete. There are 645 taxa of vascular plants, of which 37 are endemics to this area. The authors discuss the floristic composition of the ecologically dominant plants based on field surveys. Lysiloma microphyllum is the most important species in this vegetation community. Using growth form analysis, we found that climbers have a proportional frequency similar to that of the Sonoran Desert flora and neighboring communities, but are significantly less than other dry tropical forests in southern Mexico.