Floristic Diversity of Recruits in Plantations of Eucalyptus Deglupta B., 1863, Pinus Caribeae M., 1851, And Gmelina Arborea R., 1814: Case of Cellucam Plantations Near Edea (Litoral, Republic of Cameroon) (Published)

Floristic diversity is the set of plant species of an ecosystem or a given environment. Recruits are species regenerated after a disturbance in an environment. In this study it is a natural regeneration different from the artificial regeneration. The main objective of this study is to assess the level of natural regeneration under the artificial plantations. The strip sounding method is used over approximately two (2) hectares per type of plantation. Parameters measured are the abundance of recruits, the specific richness, the abundance of genera and families and the diameters of the stems. The floristic diversity was assessed through five indices. These are the Shannon indices, Simpson indices, Hill indices, regularity indices and generic diversity indices. . The results of the inventory show that the abundance of recruits is significantly different in the plantations and the surrounding forest. Species richness varies by type of plantation. Almost all of the three types of vegetation in the plantations have a Shannon index significantly greater than 1 and testifies to the very high diversity. The 1-Hill difference reached the value 0.97, 0.94 and 0.9 which values ​​very close to 1. The regularity index shows that the taxa of plant communities of the recruits are not regularly distributed and have a low taxonomic richness. The lowest value of the generic diversity indices is 1.07. This shows that generic diversity is low in the three plantations. The floristic affinity between the 3 plantations is greater than 50%. According to Sørensen, these results demonstrate that the three plantations have the same floristic composition and constitute the same biological unit.

 

Keywords: CELLUCAM, Diversity, Republic of Cameroon, plantation, recruits