Sixteen new records for the flora of Lebanon

Flora is an assembly of native plants in a bionetwork of a geographical area. Floral characteristics and plant biodiversity are very imperative for mankind because they support life in the biosphere at all probable spatial scales. They are of great prominence in local and global energy balance since they strongly impact soil properties and serve as wildlife habitat. They can flourish sometimes in biodiversity hotspots, which are earth’s most biologically rich yet vulnerable terrestrial regions [1]. Myers recognized the Mediterranean basin as one of the world’s “hotspots” comprising unique and high percentages of the world’s biodiversity in relatively small areas. Many reasons have been put forward to explicate such natural wealth, but for our purposes here, it is vital to recognize the outcomes of the geographic and climatic variations in the nature of the present biodiversity of the Mediterranean basin [2]. The Flora of the Mediterranean encompasses more than 25000 species of flowering plant, this is nearly 10% of all notorious flowering plant species on earth, although the land area of the basin is only 1.5% of the earth’s land surface [3]. The East Mediterranean, precisely the Levantine uplands [4] where Lebanon is included in this basin, is considered as one of the most stirring spots of conservation in the world. [5] In a fairly small land area, Lebanon embraces an extremely high level of biodiversity. By setting Lebanon in its universal context, the importance of this richness in its fauna and flora can be better valued. In fact, what can seem common at a local level can be highly scarce at global one [6]. The country makes up only 0.007% of the world land surface area but is a shelter to 1.11% of world plant species. Lebanon’s floral diversity is one of the premiers in the Mediterranean (more than 3150 plant species), a territory that is considered to be one of the most biologically diverse in the world. About 12% of plant species in Lebanon are endemic and this is measured as a high rate of endemism. Lebanon is also home to nine nature reserves, three biosphere reserves, one UNESCO World Heritage Site, and 15 Important Bird Areas (IBAs) recognized by Birdlife International [7][8]. This very rich and matchless biodiversity of Lebanon is chiefly due to its site in the far eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea, mountainous topography (altitudinal diversity), and the great variety in its climatic conditions. This sundry topography gives rise to many microclimates, favorable to the occurrence of many plant and animal species and communities [9,10]. Geographically, Lebanon, a narrow strip of territory nearly 160 miles long and 20 to 50 miles wide, is a mountainous country situated on the eastern shore of the Sixteen new records for the flora of Lebanon


INTRODUCTION
Flora is an assembly of native plants in a bionetwork of a geographical area. Floral characteristics and plant biodiversity are very imperative for mankind because they support life in the biosphere at all probable spatial scales. They are of great prominence in local and global energy balance since they strongly impact soil properties and serve as wildlife habitat. They can flourish sometimes in biodiversity hotspots, which are earth's most biologically rich yet vulnerable terrestrial regions [1]. Myers recognized the Mediterranean basin as one of the world's "hotspots" comprising unique and high percentages of the world's biodiversity in relatively small areas. Many reasons have been put forward to explicate such natural wealth, but for our purposes here, it is vital to recognize the outcomes of the geographic and climatic variations in the nature of the present biodiversity of the Mediterranean basin [2]. The Flora of the Mediterranean encompasses more than 25000 species of flowering plant, this is nearly 10% of all notorious flowering plant species on earth, although the land area of the basin is only 1.5% of the earth's land surface [3]. The East Mediterranean, precisely the Levantine uplands [4] where Lebanon is included in this basin, is considered as one of the most stirring spots of conservation in the world. [5] In a fairly small land area, Lebanon embraces an extremely high level of biodiversity. By setting Lebanon in its universal context, the importance of this richness in its fauna and flora can be better valued. In fact, what can seem common at a local level can be highly scarce at global one [6]. The country makes up only 0.007% of the world land surface area but is a shelter to 1.11% of world plant species. Lebanon's floral diversity is one of the premiers in the Mediterranean (more than 3150 plant species), a territory that is considered to be one of the most biologically diverse in the world. About 12% of plant species in Lebanon are endemic and this is measured as a high rate of endemism. Lebanon is also home to nine nature reserves, three biosphere reserves, one UNESCO World Heritage Site, and 15 Important Bird Areas (IBAs) recognized by Birdlife International [7] [8]. This very rich and matchless biodiversity of Lebanon is chiefly due to its site in the far eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea, mountainous topography (altitudinal diversity), and the great variety in its climatic conditions. This sundry topography gives rise to many microclimates, favorable to the occurrence of many plant and animal species and communities [9,10]. Geographically, Lebanon, a narrow strip of territory nearly 160 miles long and 20 to 50 miles wide, is a mountainous country situated on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It has a narrow coastal plain that vanishes in some places. The snow-capped Mount Lebanon range rises from the coastal plain and is disjointed from the Anti-Lebanon Range to the east by the prolific Bekaa Valley. The mountains are craggy and are mostly made up of Jurassic and Cretaceous limestone and sandstone [11].
Lebanon is the treasury of wonders for wild herbs. It still surprises us every year while continuing our fieldwork searching for wild herbs that grow on many of its benevolent lands. It unveils new plants that are added to the abundant stock of herbal treasures and embraced in its wonderful Middle Eastern environment. Most of the new discovered herbs were found in Anti-Lebanon Range and Bekaa Valley. Many scientists expounded on the Lebanese flora such as Tohme and Tohme, Haber and Haber, Mouterde, Post, Dinsmoreand, Addam, Bou-Hamdan and others. [12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24]. In 2014, and according to Tohme and Tohme's calculations, the overall number of Lebanese plants (trees and ferns included) was 2,612 species, 770 genera, 155 families, and 58 [14] unfound species by the authors which have been mentioned to subsist in Lebanon previously by Mouterde P. [15] and Post G. [13] Actually, there are no meticulous data about the factual number of existing flora in Lebanon. This is because some authors and researchers cited many species and number of floras in their books without any official (peer reviewed journals) publications or even any deposited specimens for these species in any herbarium in Lebanon to ascertain academically that they were found; we have only books with pictures without academic pieces of evidence or value. The second reason is the publications that have been completed by scientists from other countries and we found by chance during our search in Research Gate for literature review. Besides, few are the professional taxonomists in the field of botany in Lebanon, those researchers that have a specialized fieldwork and skills in the Lebanese flora. This is one of the most arduous works in the field of Botany. It needs wide knowledge, fervor, persistence, determination, and love to nature. During our very extended journey in the field work (22 years), we (K Addam & M Bou-Hamdan) found more than three hundred new records of flora that strive normally in Lebanon. We commenced publishing them at 2013 and activated our process every year more and more. We collect these species, varieties, subsp, hybrids and formas and deposit them as dried samples vouchers specimens in K. Addam's Herbarium Arts, Sciences and Technology University in Lebanon AUL in which they are published gradually.These new discovered floras were not found before because of the occurrence of extremely difficult environmental conditions as they grow in regions such as high mountains, rocky territories, rural places and the perilous political conditions predominantly reaching the Syrian borders where the war is in action. Much of the border lies on far-off and mountainous terrains that make access challenging and threatening [25].

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Tens of expeditions took place to unusual places of Lebanon from its North to South and East, but mainly, a lot of them were found in the Northeast. Most of the newly found species were discovered and registered in countless places in Lebanon between the years 2011and 2019 and were followed and observed. Plants were collected, dried, mounted, and deposited in AUL University -Lebanon at K. Addam Herbarium. All the plants were found and pictured during flowering time by M. Bou-Hamdan except Onosma fruticosum Smlder. which was found and pictured by K. Addam and Platanthera holmboei H. Lindb. by Khaled Taleb. These species are incorporated neither in books nor in relevant publications whereby literatures have been published before. Most of these species are very rare in Lebanon and very tiring to discover, but they are straightforwardly distinguished and detected during the fieldwork especially at grave places at the border with Syria where a state of war is going on till now.

RESULTS
In this study, Anchusa milleri, Bassia hyssopifolia, Eminium heterophyllum (Blume) Schott., Euphorbia prostrata Aiton, Euphorbia serpens Kunth, Hypericum olivieri (Spach) Boiss., Kickxia cirrhosa (L.) Fritsch., Lamium macrodon Boiss. & A. Huet, Onosma fruticosum Sm.lder, Plantago crypsoides Boiss., Platanthera holmboei H. Lindb., Potamogeton perfoliatus L., Rhamnus kurdica Boiss. & Hohen., Tulipa biflora Pall. and Xanthium strumarium subsp. sibiricum (Patrin ex Widder) Greuter. were discovered, identified, and examined for their taxonomic, morphologic and phenological attributes and added to the Lebanese flora for the first time. Only Quercus libani G. Olivier was reported to be found by George Poste in 1933 and since then, no one has reported to find this species in Lebanon. Even Mouterde in 1966 did not find it. He pondered how it was called Libani, and it was found by him only in the North Lattakia forest in Syria during his whole field work for about 35 years in Lebanon. Quercus libani was discovered in two places in Lebanon after 97 years.

Bassia Hyssopifolia (Pall.) Kuntze. (Amaranthaceae)
Description: Annual plant, commonly up to 1m (sometimes taller 1.5m) with plain or branching stems; leaf lower 5-60 mm, 1-3.5 mm wide blades are flat (wilted in age) and linear to lance-shaped; short inflorescence 5-50 mm; bracts +-oblong; narrow spike, occupying the upper stem, filled with flowers (woolly-haired) growing solitary, paired (sometimes in clusters of three); cramped flower with five segments, each of which has a hooked spine at maturity; fruit less than 2 mm in length, curved spines +-1 mm; dry fruit 1-1.5 mm diam; seed dark brown; taproot with few to several lateral diverged fibrous roots ( Figure 2: [27,28] Habitat: This plant simply grows in alkaline and saline soils. It favors wetland areas and drought disturbed regions such as roadsides and crop fields and even near the seashores next to the garbage. It usually does not have a harmful outcome on local ecosystems. The infestations are seldom acute.
Habitat: dry to moist substrates, full sun on marginally acidic to alkaline, mountains, grassy areas in garrigue, frequently favors open rocky places in tough environmental factors. It thrives also in resilient seasonal habitats and adapts to a semi-arid
Habitat: Mediterranean climate portrayed by a hot, extremely humid summer, pleasurable autumn and spring, and cool rainy winter. 86 m, grows in alkaline and saline soil, favors wetland areas and drought disturbed regions such as roadsides beside the coastlines and garbage.

Euphorbia Serpens Kunth (Euphorbiaceae)
Description: Annual plant, minute, much-branched prostrate with hairless branches up to 20 cm long (can reach a length of 65 cm), rooting at nodes; leaves 4 mm long, greyish green without dark spots (later the entire leaf can turn into purplish), simple, lobed or unlobed but not separated into leaflets, opposite, two leaves per node along the stem , broadly ovate to about round, up to, cordate at the base; margin entire; inflorescence, stipules are whitish, connate, wider than long; cyathium 1 per node, white appendages, involucre 0.5--1.5 mm, obconic; glands 4, < 0.5 mm, transversely oblong ; flower terminal or on petite axillary shoots, radially symmetrical, maroon-purple a white, no petals, sepals or tepals in the flower, or they are not clearly present, sexes separate on the same; fruit 3-lobed capsule 18 mm long, yellowish-green, exserted on a reflexed pedicel ( Figure 5) [33,34,35].
Habitat: Same habits as Euphorbia prostrate. In fact, they share the same place.
Habitat: Pine forests in the shade and open places, riversides amid the rocks, field margins, uncultivated roadsides, hill slopes, and waste ground.
Habitat: The climate of the area is depicted by cold winters with frequent precipitation as snow (annual rainfall rate 1200 mm),

Onosma Fruticosa Labill (Boraginaceae)
Description: Perennial, small erect or suberect shrubs (few parts drying back annually, usually the short in-florescence shoots only) or subshrubs with minute, narrow leaves, reminding somewhat of Lavandula leaves and the terminal one or two flowered (very rarely three-flowered) inflorescences, as well as the indumentum of stellate and tiny simple hairs; stem, indumentum of long setae and short hairs ± appressed to patent, tubercles bulged, without or with few rays on the periphery; leaves (on full grown plants in nature), narrow, obovate or lanceolate, strongly enrolled at the margin, and look fascicled on the young shoots in the axils of the leaf; sepals, narrow lanceolate to narrow triangular, free up to the base, little enlarged in fruit indumentum, outside appressed to patent; tubercles of long setae with our without rays, short hairs in-between, whitish-bearded at the margin in the lower 1/2 -2/3, inside short hairs up to the base, hairs become longer in the upper 2/3, dense toward the tips; corolla dark yellow, becoming red or orange brown at the mouth during anthesis, fading bluish when wilting and drying up papillose from outside, hairy on the tips and along the back of the lobes, sparsely hairy along the dorsal veins of the tube, from inside smooth, except for the slightly papillose tips; corolla filament-tube is approximately has the same length as the free parts of the filaments; anthers, strongly attached side by side at the very base, more or less sticked relatively together laterally, gradually tightened to the tip, nutlets ovoid, regularly one half a bit smaller, widest near the middle or barely below, no shoulders, apex actively rounded, ventral edge a little protruding, rounded, not sharp (Figure 9) [41].
Habitat: dry fresh calcareous basic-rich soils, pine forests but it grows in direct sunlight and never beneath the trees, poor meadows, open rocky place at high altitudes (1052 m).
Habitat: Prefers growing in the shady moist places in rainy moist winter (annual rainfall rate 1300 mm), semi dry summer, under the trees in dense Pine and Quercus woods hiding between big rocks at 950m.

Potamogeton Perfoliatus L. (Potamogetonaceae)
Description: Perennial aquatic plant arises in both standing and flowing freshwater habitats; stems up to 3m, round; leaves 20-115 mm long, 7-42 mm wide, submerged (no floating leaves), translucent, oval, with no stalk, flat apex, veins (5-12) on either side of the midrib, undulating margins, vary considerably in color, might be dark green, bright green, yellowish, olive, brownish and red brown; Stipules, rather delicate, commonly fall off quite directly soon after the new leaf has unfurled; inflorescence, spike 1 to 2 cm, short when in fruit, flowers small, green, on dense spikes up to 3 cm long at water surface; fruit 2.5 to 3 cm, olive-green asmooth, semi-circular on the dorsal side and convex on the ventral; keel is faint with two lateral ridges on the dorsal side, beak is very short; rhizome, creeping, robust, sporadically ( Figure 12) [44,45,46].
Habitat: Grows in the wetlands of Lebanon. They have the richest biodiversity of habitats of all semi desert habitats (low rain and hot summer), wide range of freshwater habitats including lakes, rivers and streams, large ponds and canals, and sufficient amounts of sun and water.  Figure 17).
Habitat: The climate of the area is depicted by cold winters with frequent precipitation as snow (annual rainfall rate 1200 mm), rigorous summers with extended physiological drought, prefers full sun, on slightly acidic to alkaline, rocky
Habitat: Same aforementioned habitats as Anchusa in addition to Rhamnus kurdica, thrive at high rocky mountains between big rocks whereby these trees are challengingly unreachable.
Habitat: Heavy snow and rainy moist winter (annual rainfall rate 1000 mm) and fall, dry summer, on slightly acidic to alkaline rocky mountains. It prefers open rocky places in obstinate environmental conditions.

DISCUSSION
Most of the species found are very sporadic in Lebanon and some of them are even added to the red list (Hypericum olivieri (Spach) Boiss., Plantago crypsoides Boiss., Quercus libani G. Olivier) [51,52]. Quercus libani was found in the Cedar Wood of Ain Zhalta in 2015 and in Mount Mresty in 2018 at an altitude of 1600-1800m. Its presence in Lebanon was mentioned according to G Post in both Cedar Woods of Barouk and Ain Zhalta in 1932 [13]. Since then, no one had acknowledged or mentioned anything about its existence in the country. As for Moterde who could not find it in Lebanon in his 35 years of fieldwork in Lebanon, we wonder how it was called Libani and he found it only in the North Lattakia forest in Syria [15]. We wonder how he could not find it for 35 years of fieldwork even though it was easy to find in these places which were pointed out by Post.It was very difficult to discover Rhamnus kurdica Boiss. & Hohen due to the struggles to reach it at high altitudes (1061 m) and treacherous rocky mountains at Ras Baalbek since it favors to grow between the rocks as if it is getting out of them and in semi desert climate. Post mentioned that it was found at Anti-Lebanon Mountains in 1933 [13], but he did not pinpoint whether its place is in the Lebanese part or Syrian part of this chain. Mouterde did not find it at all. So, if post found it in the Syrian part, then we will be the first scientists that announce its existence in Lebanon for the first time. Hypericum olivieri was found for the first time by Spach and called Eremosporum olivieri [53]. In 1867, Boissier E. classified it as Hypericum olivieri (Spach) Boiss. and this is its scientific and accepted authorship name [54]. Hypericum olivieri is a very occasional flora and has not been recorded in Lebanon by any author before. Mouterde mentioned that it existed in Syria but not in Lebanon. Hypericum olivieri is a very infrequent flora in Lebanon and needs to be safeguarded. We think it is threatened because of urbanism. Onosma fruticosa is considered an endemic flora to Cyprus [55]. It was found in Lebanon seven years ago (2013) in a small village called Botmeh in Mont Lebanon. We searched during these seven years for it hoping that it might be found at other places in Lebanon but couldn't, so we decided finally to publish it. More than hundred Onosma fruticosa were found to flourish in this place outstandingly side by side with Saturea thymbra. Even before these seven years, we thought that it was Saturea till we recognized it in its blossoming period with its mind-blowing attractive flower of different colors like white, yellow and yellowish orange. Plantago crypsoides Boiss Near

Recommendations
The recent loss of biodiversity as well as a plethora of other factors have put 50,000 plant species at a global eminent risk of extinction. Conserving at-risk species is often complicated by covariance or non-additivity among threats, which makes it challenging to establish optimal management strategies. We sought to demographically measure covariance and nonadditive impacts of more risks on more infrequent plant species than ever endeavoured in Lebanon [57]. Perhaps the widespread destruction of habitat is the utmost threat that faces many species. Scientists worldwide assure that the best way to safeguard the endangered species is to protect the distinctive places where they thrive. Wild plants need places that secure their needs of nutrients and appropriate territories to organize the germination of the new breed systematically. Logging, over-grazing, and development all result in habitat destruction. Therefore, special attention should be addressed to the cattle's overgrazing which leads to the extinction of these rare flora. Moreover, a continuous observation of the number, blossoming, and scarcity of these flora must be considered to acknowledge the reasons behind their extinction.By supporting the protection of wildlife habitat, whole communities of plants in parks, wildlife refuges, and other open spaces that are great places to visit and enjoy are safeguarded [58].A host of actions must be emphasized and fortified in order to support the reverse of the trend politically, technically, and financially. Fortunately, some of our novel records are still existent and are present securely because of the following circumstances: a. The presence of tremendously austere environmental conditions as they grow in highly mountainous territories and rocky terrains b. The presence of distant mountain landscapes which make the access strenuous c. The menacing political situations specifically reaching the Syrian borders where the war is in action d. The absence of ecotourism as well as sports and touristic activities Measurements a. Raising awareness by introducing educational and social events, news jacking, and distributing brochures. These awareness campaigns would be accessible for the general public and villagers precisely to hinder fires that might occur because of the garbage thrown by people in these mountains. b. Emphasizing the importance of utilizing dedicated research about the new records in this rural area because of its copiousness [23].

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The team would like to thank Miss. Joumana Itani for her assistance in drawing the illustrations as well as all those who assisted us in the success of this publication. The team would also like to thank Mr. Khaled Taleb who found and showed us Platanthera holmboei H. Lindb. Special thanks to Ass. Prof. Jean Stefan LU (Lebanese University) and Prof. Ghassan Ibrahim DU (Damascus University) for their academic cooperation.