FLORA

The Flora of Somiedo

Somiedo Natural Park contains, to varying degrees, all three main bioclimatic zones of the Cantabrian coast:

• Colline zone (up to 400–500 metres altitude)

• Montane zone (from 400–500 m up to 1,600 m)

• Subalpine zone (from 1,600 m up to 2,300–2,400 m)

The montane zone covers the greatest part of the park, with the other two zones occupying a clearly smaller extent. In both of the lower zones, the mature stage of the various vegetation series is woodland. However, the current landscape of Somiedo differs significantly from that of a fully wooded territory: different stages of plant succession are visible (grassy and shrubby formations), largely as a result of human activity, which has profoundly transformed the forest landscape.

It should be noted that there are environments where woodland can barely take hold — rocky outcrops, screes, peat bogs, lakes and the like — where specialised permanent communities of shrubs and herbaceous plants develop. Beech woods are the most common forests in Somiedo, covering a total of 4,554 hectares. These forests occupy the altitudinal band between 600 and 1,000 metres, mainly on hillsides.

Other forests present in the park include white oak and Pyrenean oak woodlands, birch woods, cool riverside forests in valley bottoms, alder groves and holm oak woods. The latter — found on calcareous soils, in dry conditions, generally below 1,100 metres — are relict in nature and cover 665 hectares. The scrub and grassland communities of the colline and montane zones are generally stages in the degradation of the climax vegetation, or non-natural formations created and maintained by humans to support livestock farming, which remains of great importance in the municipality of Somiedo.