Vegetation

Categories / City Topography/Nature and Natural Phenomena
VEGETATION. St. Petersburg is situated in the Southern Taiga subzone characterised by a dominance of coniferous forests with grass and shrub formations. Prior to active human settlement the Neva Lowland and the coast of the Gulf of Finland were covered with fir and pine-tree (including water-logged) forests and swamps. In the early second millennium BC forests growing in the most suitable areas were carved out for agricultural use. In the course of development of St. Petersburg large quantities of natural vegetation was destroyed across an area of over 80,000 hectares and partly replaced by plantations. However, by 2003 approximately 28,000 hectares (20% of St. Petersburg's total area) are covered with Taiga forests located mainly in the city's northern part as well as in some of its parks (the Sosnovka (pine-tree) forest, Udelny District forest and a number of others). The forests are largely dominated by pines (approximately 12,000 hectares) of cranberry, bilberry and sphagnum type. Pine-tree forests of Kurortny District are of great recreational significance. Fir-tree forests (bilberry, sorrel and bilberry-sphagnum ones, amount to about 3,500 hectares) survived in Kurortny and Primorsky districts. About 11,000 hectares are occupied by birch groves which grew up after felling and fires of caniferous forests, on abandoned agricultural lands and cumulic soils. Up to 2,000 hectares are covered with forests dominated by pine, alder, goat willow. Stocky alders grow along the coast of the Gulf of Finland. Swamps (mostly upland and transition moors) occupy over 3% of St. Petersburg's territory with the Sestroretsk undisturbed shrub/sedge/sphagnum treeless moor as one of the largest. Other large bogs such as the Lakhtinsky, Shuvalovsky, Obukhovsky, Sosnovsky throughout time were drained and peat harvested. Later they became overgrown with trees, and were partly employed for agricultural purposes; swamp vegetation has partly survived. The natural vegetation also includes large reeds, cane and sedge bushes along the coasts of the Gulf of Finland. Artificial plantations (parks, gardens, small park, boulevards, cemetery plantings and other types) occupy over 15,000 hectares. Besides inland hardwoods (birch, lime, oak, ash, elm and others) over 50 kinds of introduced trees (larch, fir, silver fir, horse chestnut, ginnala maple) and shrubs (hawthorn, dogwood, snowberry, lilac and others) have been planted. Residential areas which appeared in the 1950-70s are dominated by plants of fast-growing poplar varieties. About 18% of St. Petersburg's territory is occupied by agricultural lands (arable land, meadows, vegetable gardens, community gardens). In the last decades of the 20th century some of the agricultural land has become either overgrown with shrubs (predominantly willow varieties) and small-leaved trees or boggy. Shrubs and grasses dominated by weeds and air bourn varieties (wormwood, dandelion and others) cover numerous waste lands, dumps and railway embankments.

References: Горышина Т. К. Зеленый мир старого Петербурга. СПб., 2003.

G. А. Isachenko.