Botanical and mycological research in Bielański Forest in Warsaw (central Poland) during the 19th century

The Bielański Forest in Warsaw is one of the most valuable natural areas in central Poland. Its royal ownership and the presence of the Camaldolese monastery helped it to maintain high naturalness by the late 18th century. This study presents research carried out in the Bielański Forest, on vascular plants, mosses, lichens, fungi and slime moulds in the 19th century. The initiators of research in the first half of the 19th century were M. Szubert and shortly thereafter W. Jastrzębowski. The first data were published in the second half of the century by, among others, K. Majewski, F. Karo and J. Rostafiński. The majority of research from the Bielański Forest was published in Polish scientific journals Pamiętnik Fizyjograficzny and Wszechświat, established in the 1880s. At that time, on the initiative of T. Chałubiński, studies of bryophytes and lichens began, carried out by K. Filipowicz, S. Dawid, J. Steinhaus, and F. Błoński, who also researched vascular plants and fungi. Fungi were also studied by S. Chełchowski, slime moulds by J. Aleksandrowicz and J. Rostafiński, and vascular plants by F. Kamieński, H. Cybulski, and K. Łapczyński, who as the first noticed the impoverishment of the Bielański Forest flora. Our analyses allowed us to establish that of the 45 species of vascular plants reported from Bielany by Rostafiński (1872), about 50% of the taxa had not been observed by the 1920s, and nearly 67% by the end of the 20th century. Of the group of 14 species listed by Rostafiński and currently considered as endangered or protected, Kobendza (1929) listed only one. Of the 26 species listed by Błoński (1892), nearly 54% had disappeared by the end of the 20th century. From the group of 30 species of macrofungi recorded at the end of the 19th century, considered now as endangered, only 6 taxa were recorded a century later.