Flora along the Corfu Trail

The flora of Corfu, as well as the other Ionian islands, has been under study even form the late 18th c., as the regular relationships with W. Europe and the spirit and sense of freedom prevailing here (contrary to the rest of the Greek space) provided an open field for scientific research.

From then on, several individual researchers have conducted botanical studies on the island and hence one can claim that there is a good view of its flora.

According to the available data, the flora of Corfu consists of more than 1340 taxa (species and subspecies). Fabaceae, Poaceae και Asteraceae are the richest families in number of species, a fact suiting with the intense habitation and use of land on the island (these families host several wild crop relatives but also species adapted to semi-natural biotopes).

Due to its proximity with mainland and the absence of high peaks, the endemism of the island is low.

The sole local endemic plant is Limonium arcuatum, on the western shore of the island, while approx. 15 Greek endemics occur here.

Nevertheless, as Corfu lies in the westernmost side of Greece, we can find here plants mainly distributed in the Balkan or Italian peninsula and are rare in Greece, such as the chasmophyte Erysimum linariifolium, a species of W. Balkans.

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