Bryophytes records from Maçka District (Trabzon Province-Turkey)

As a result of bryological collecting trips in the Maçka District (Trabzon Province) in Turkey, a total number of 235 bryophytes belonging to 108 genera (17 liverworts and 91 mosses) were determined from 20 different localities. Of these, 26 taxa belong to liverworts and 209 taxa belong to mosses.

Maçka is one of the districts of Trabzon Province and it is located South of Trabzon in the eastern Black Sea Region. The study area is situated in the Euro-Siberian floristic region. It is surrounded by the Gümüşhane province in the south, Trabzon City in the north, the Tonya and Düzköy districts in the west, and the Yomra district and Gümüşhane province in the east (Fig. 1).
The eastern Black Sea region is dominated by alpine, subalpine and forest vegetation and shows close links with the same zones. The area is covered by mixed forests dominated by Alnus glutinosa (L.) Gaertner, Fagus orientalis Lipsky, Picea orientalis (L.) Link, Castanea sativa Mill., Carpinus betulus L., Corylus avellana L., and alpine meadows (Papp 2004).
The climate in the research area has the characteristics of the eastern Black Sea climatic region. The annual average rainfall is 1429 mm and the average temperature is 6.4°C in the area (Akman 1999, Palabaş Uzun andAnşin 2006).
The bedrock in the Maçka region ranges in age from Liassic to Eocene. The oldest part observed in the region has basaltic, andesitic and acitic volcanic rocks at the base. Most of the bedrocks are of volcanic origin (Gülibrahimoğlu 1985).
There have been many bryofloristic studies carried out in the Trabzon Province up to the present (Gökler 1998, Papp 2004, Townsend 2005, Lara et al. 2010, Batan and Özdemir 2011, Kırmacı and Kürschner 2013, Özdemir and Batan 2017, Erata et al. 2018, Erata and Batan 2019. However, there has not been any bryofloristic studies carried out in the Maçka District to date. Papp (2004), collected bryophyte samples from two localities of Altındere valley National Park in Maçka and Tortula bambergeri was reported from the Akarsu valley in Maçka by . Therefore, this study provides a contribution to the bryophyte flora of Maçka and Turkey.

Material and methods
The bryophyte samples were collected from Maçka in Turkey. Material was collected from 20 localities ( Table 1). The bryophyte samples were examined using light microscope and stereomicroscope. Identifications were made using relevant floras and keys (Crum and Anderson 1981, Ireland 1982, Nyholm 1986, 1989, Lewinsky 1993, Blom 1996, Smith 1996, Paton 1999, Pedrotti 2001, 2006, Greven 2003, Heyn and Herrnstadt 2004, Frey et al. 2006, Guerra et al. 2006, 2014, Brugués et al. 2007, Kürschner and Frey 2011, Brugués and Guerra 2015, Capparós et al. 2016. For each taxon, localities and substrate were given in the floristic list. The taxa recorded as new from Maçka distict are indicated with (#), new records for Trabzon with (+). Also new records for the A4 square, according to the grid system of Henderson (Henderson, 1961) are indicated with (*) in the bryofloristic list. Nomenclature of the species follows Ros et al. (2007) and Söderström et al. (2016) for liverworts and Ros et al. (2013), Plášek et al. (2015), Lara et al. (2016) and Hodgetts et al. (2019) for mosses. The species list is arranged according to the system proposed by Goffinet et al. (2009). The new records for Trabzon and the A4 gridsquare were determined by reviewing the related literature (Özenoğlu-Kiremit and Keçeli 2009, Hazer 2010, Özdemir and Batan 2017, Erata et al. 2018. Bryophyte samples are kept at the Biology Department, Faculty of Science, Karadeniz Technical University (Trabzon), Turkey.
In the bryofloristic list the species are in taxonomic order followed by locality numbers and habitats.
Due to the suitable habitat conditions, high rainfall, acidic bedrock and mixed forests vegetation the bryophyte flora of Maçka is rich. Thus, hygrophyte, xerophyte and mesophyte taxa were observed in the study area. Bryophytes taxa were collected on soils, rocks and trunks of trees in the study area.