Phytosociological Studios on Natural Vegetation in Hoo-Won, Changduk Palace

창경궁 후원 자연식생의 식물사회학적 연구

The vegetation structure in the Hoo - Won, Changduk Palace in Seoul was analysed on 10 sites sampled for understanding structure of natural vegetation. The main vegetational survey was conducted during July, 1985 and actual vegetaion and degree of natural vegetaion types were surveyed additionally. The result summarized of this research are as follows. 1) The physical - chemical conditions of soil showed middle class. This might be derived by short succession period from Pine forest to decidious broadleaf forest and artificial impact by human intervention. 2) When considering dominance species by crown story, Quercus aliena was a dominant species over all site and Castanea crenata, Prunus sargentii and Quercus variabilis appeared as a dominant species locally at upper story. Styrax story and Rhododendron mucronulatum, Styrax japonica, Stephanandra incisa and Lespedeza spp. at lower story. 3) The distances kept by trees per crown story are as follows. The mean distances between trees were 4.5-5.5m at upper story, 2.8-3.3m at middle story. On the other hand, the mean distances between dominant species were 6-8m at upper story, 5-9m at middle story. 4) The vegetation in this area was not developed yet into dominant species community according to the similarity analysis. The natural vegetation was dominated by Quercus spp. especially Quercus aliena according to the analysis of species diversity, relative dominance by story and DBH class. On the orther hand, succession to climax stage dominated by shade tolerent species will take a long time due to little appearance of shade tolerence species by previous heavy artificial impacts on understory species. 5) Quercus forest took possesion of 71.3%(27.37ha) of total forest area when considering the actual vegetation and especially Quercus aliena community covered 53.2%(15.21ha). Carpinus laxiflora community, one of the climax species in temperate zone, took possesion of 1.0%(0.3ha) and Pine densiflora was almost disappeared due to species competition. 6) According to the degree of natural vegetation types, the possession of degree of 6-9 was 60.6% and degree of 7-8, substitute vegetation, was 15.5%. The possesion of degree of 9 which consists of over 50 years old trees simliar to natural vegetaion was the highest, 43.1% in this area. Therefore continuous protection in this area of degree of 9 should be recommended.