A critical evaluation of the Carpathian endemic plant taxa list from the Romanian Carpathians.

Although several studies on plant endemism have been carried out in the Romanian Carpathians, taxonomic inconsistencies persist, along with the insufficient availability of distribution data. Our study aims to reduce these uncertainties by having extensive coverage of available chorological data and seeking consensus among different authors as to taxonomic validity. For this reason, we have assembled a vast collection of chorological data, comprising literature sources, historical herbarium collections and field surveys covering the Romanian Carpathians. We subsequently surveyed the botanical literature from neighboring countries (Serbia, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Ukraine, Republic of Moldova) to gain a better overview of the distribution of the taxa analyzed. We considered 132 taxa to be 'good endemics', having mainly two types of distribution: Pan-Carpathian and South-Eastern Carpathian. All of these are occurring in the Romanian Carpathians, many confined solely to our mountain range. A few of these taxa, namely sub-endemics, are characterized by an ecological optimum that allows them to grow in lowland areas, having been cited from the regions adjacent to the Carpathians. We have excluded the polymorphic genera Hieracium, Alchemilla and Rubus and numerous other taxa considered by various authorities at particular times to possess the characteristics of endemics but without any consensus between authors.