EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN Geography In this chapter we include all countries in Europe except Russia and Turkey because the largest parts of these two countries are in Asia. Also included are countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea in North Africa and West Asia, except Turkey, and the Azores, Canary Islands and Madeira in the Atlantic Ocean. Countries in the Caucasus Region and Russia and Turkey are included in the chapter Mainland Asia and Japan. For completeness the European part of Turkey is included in map EM-1. Europe as here circumscribed has a total area of 8.75 million km² and the countries bordering the Mediterranean total 6.33 million km² but most of that vast area is extreme desert. The total area for this region is 15.08 million km². Europe is geographically very complex. As a whole it is a subcontinent of Asia (together known as Eurasia) but in its parts it is made up of large and smaller peninsulas and islands and, sur- rounded by seas on all sides but the E, Europe is itself a large peninsula. In the N it extends well within the Arctic Circle with the North Cape at 71° 11’ N and is made up of the large island Iceland and Scandinavia, mostly a large peninsula but with Finland bordering on Russia and Denmark a smaller peninsula and islands. Great Britain and Ireland are large islands in the NW nearer the mainland; small islands lie out in the Atlantic Ocean between Great Britain and Iceland, on the Mid Atlantic Ridge and W of the African coast. Portugal and Spain make up the large Iberian Peninsula surrounded by the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, while mainland Italy is a long pen- insula into the Mediterranean. Further peninsulas and islands mark this largest of the world’s inland seas. The African coast of this sea is mostly a narrow band or strip of mountains and hills beyond which stretches the Sahara. Europe has numerous mountains, the highest of which are the Alps culminating in Mont Blanc at 4807 m. Extensive mountain ranges are also present in Norway and Sweden, the Balkans, E Europe (Carpathian Mts.), on the border of France and Spain (Pyrenees) and in Italy (Apennines). Smaller mountain systems exist in Scotland, Wales, central France, Spain, the large Mediterranean Islands and Lebanon. In North Africa the Atlas Mountains extend through much of Morocco and N Algeria. Extensive lowlands are situated in NW Europe including Great Britain and Ireland, in countries around the Baltic Sea and in E Europe bordering Russia. Although influenced by the ameliorating seas in most parts, the climate of Europe ranges from subarctic to Mediterranean and from continental to oceanic. In North Africa, mountains and the Mediterranean Sea temper the aridity and heat of the Saharan Desert. As a result, extremes of climate in Europe and the Mediterranean are rare and limited to relatively small areas, e.g. alpine summits and the far N of Finland, Sweden and Norway for low temperatures and some parts of the N African coast for aridity. Extensive glaciations spreading from Scandinavia in the Pleisto- cene caused arctic and subarctic conditions in Europe N of the Pyrenees and Alps. The E-W ori- entation and massive glaciations in these mountain ranges blocked southward migration of trees in particular, as was possible in Asia and North America. The roughly one million year period of glaciations alternating with shorter warm intervals has had a profound negative influence on the tree flora of Europe. Extinctions devastated this flora, including conifers. Recently, many of these 140 europe and the mediterranean have been reintroduced by people and are doing well in much of Europe, but this Atlas is only concerned with the native conifer flora. Conifers in Europe and the Mediterranean Families Genera Species Species + infra Countries with Area of occupancy Endemic taxa conifers in km² 3/8 9/70 41/615 61/794 52/53 51,575/15,080,000 43 Numbers after ‘/’ are global or continent totals. The diversity of native conifers in Europe and the Mediterranean is therefore low, with three families, only nine genera and 41 species present. (The SW Pacific island of New Caledonia has 43 species.) There is a relatively high proportion of infra-specific taxa but this is to some extent due to taxonomic splitting, a result of long-time studies of the species involved. All countries except Vatican City have native conifers, but in many there are only 1–3 species, e.g. Iceland with one, Ireland with two and the United Kingdom with three. Endemism is relatively high at 70% of taxa due to barriers such as the sea and the desert that surround the region on all sides but the E where taxonomic diversity of conifers is low for much of the length of this border. The main corridors out of Europe and the Mediterranean for conifer species are through Turkey and the Caucasus. Map EM-1. Distribution of conifer species in Europe and the Mediterranean. The distribution of species shows clear patterns with areas of diversity versus areas lacking coni- fer species. The data do not allow us to show the ubiquity of conifers, but with very few species, in Scandinavia. As with other general distribution maps that include the northern boreal for- ests, there are not enough herbarium collections to cover this. Similarly in Great Britain, Ireland and Iceland, which have three and only one native species of conifer respectively, there is but a sampling of localities represented. In the rest of Europe and the Mediterranean, the distribution .