ABSTRACT
Many of the patterns in mountain plant richness had been obvious to botanists and naturalists, but had been quantified in only a few cases. On a global scale, plant species richness on mountains has been suggested to decline with increasing latitude. In addition to climate, soil conditions have long been known to play an important role for alpine plant species diversity, with calcareous substrates commonly supporting more species. Whether this holds for mountains across Europe is unknown. Similarly, patterns of snow distribution affect alpine vegetation. The relationship between species richness and soil conditions was not found to be consistent across the mountains of Europe. There were several types of relationships between local and regional species richness. Saturating curves were typical for vegetation on siliceous soil and for wind-exposed communities on calcareous soil. These relationships indicate that the local richness plateaus were far below the regional species richness.
