Floristic characteristics and their significance in the conservation of evergreen broad-leaved forests in the Zhejiang islands

There are many scattered islands along the coast of Zhejiang in the East China Sea. Among them, the larger islands are often distributed with zonal and stable evergreen broad-leaved forests, which includ Form. Cinnamomum camphora(L.) Presl with different chief compounds (CC), Form. Cyclobalanopsis glauca (Thunb.) Oerst. with different CC, Form. Lithocarpus glaber (Thunb.) Nakai, and Form. Abarema lucida (Benth.) Kosterm. Based on analysis of the vertical structure, we identified 139 dominant and common vascular plant species in the evergreen broad-leaved forests or similar forests in the Zhejiang islands, which showed Tropical Asia, East Asia (especially Sino-Japanese), and Chinese endemic elements for all synusiae from the canopy to the ground layer, including the tree layer, shrub layer, herbaceous layer, and inter-layers. Further analysis of the distributions of 15 Chinese endemic woody species showed that the floristic components were subtropical rather than temperate. In the evergreen broad-leaved forest zones, we identified secondary deciduous broad-leaved forests, which exhibited greater area and different succession stages after the destruction and deforestation of the native vegetation. Thus, secondary forests require protection as it is not clear what stage they belong to in the ecological succession. As such, these forests would be ideal areas for studying secondary succession and restoration ecology. The evergreen broad-leaved forests of the Zhejiang islands are of significance in biodiversity conservation due to their important characters and marine Sino-Japanese floristic elements.