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The vascular flora of the satellite islands of Sicily

Agriculture
Human activities can increase floristic diversity: in fact, the traditional low-
impact agricultural practices typical of the circum-Sicilian islands (including
horticulture; cereal crop culture; olive, caper, and wine culture on terraces
surrounded by stone walls; etc.) gave rise to complex agro-ecosystems formed by
cultivated areas and fallows that hosted, and still host, many interesting species
and plant communities that are rapidly disappearing with land abandonment.
This is the fate of many companion species of the last cereal crops and fallows
at Lampedusa (Pasta, 2001; La Mantia et al., 2011), Marettimo (Gianguzzi
et al., 2006), Ustica (Pasta et al., 2007b), Pantelleria, and the Aeolian Islands
(Rühl & Pasta, 2008). At present, some of these plants, like Volutaria lippii and
Marrubium alysson, live only in the fallows of Linosa and Lampedusa, and
nowhere else in Sicily.

Fig.3. One of the last terraced areas of Lampedusa (Pelagie Archipelago) devoted to cereal
crop cultures (photo T. La Mantia).

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