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A SHORT DESCRIPTION . . . | | | | |
The Pisan Mountains occupy a territory form vaguely oval
lengthened, extending from S/E To N/O, for a length of 20 km, with a width
of 10 Km.
 In the group distinguish for height: Mt. Faeta 831 m., Spuntone of
S. Allago 870 m., Mt. Serra 917 m., Mt. Pruno 876 m., and Mt. Verruca 537
m., that erect to fan, forming a valley turned to South, said "Valgraziosa".
In the group also exist several types of habitats given by the different
exposure to the sun during the day, from the Lucchese side To N/E, find an
undergrowth and a damper microclimate, instead from the Pisan side to S/O,
affected also from the closeness of the sea have an environment more sunny
and dry. In the zones of low share of all the mountainous chain the
vineyards are diffuse, then passes to the terrazzamenti of olives, and in
the highest shares are extensive: chestnuts wood, coppices of beech and oak,
alternated to extensive pinewoods. Even though in the last decades the number of the violent waste fires has increased
and evil the nature, of which, still we see the
signs, the group still preserves unchanged his big ambient value. Is present a little zone of Larico pine, of which the origin has not been
understood yet. Maybe are little fragments of far epoches, in which
the kind was more diffuse. | | | | | |
GENERAL VEGETATIONAL NOTES | | | | |
The man's continuos action has modified and variegated the
vegetational
 complex
of the district of the Pisan Mountains. This modifying action is begun since
the beginning of the quaternary era, when the Pisan Mountains were mostly
engaged by phytocenosis to dominance of holm in the most thermophile zones,
to leave place to the woodsy complexes of deciduous in the mesofile zones.
At present environments characteristic of the district has characterized by
a vegetational covering represented according to the degree of human
occupation from woods or garrigue of sclerophyllous ( to dominance of holm,
Quercus ilex L., chestnut, pinewoods of maritime pine, woods mixed of
broad-leaved, areas submitted to vegetable growing and destined zones to
vineyards and olive-groves ). While the busy holm wood areas are extremely
reduced and often constituted mostly by individuals reduced to bushes or
however dimension redoubts, several extended in calcareous rock zones (prevalently
on the southern district versant) are the garrigue. Of much bare aspect, these vegetational formations
has substitute the preceding woodsy
complexes to sclerophyllous (like ilex wood, exactly) following ecological
succession phenomena, often later repeated woodsy fires. On
the versant
 of Lucca of the district extensive fruit chestnut woods find in
more fresh and rainy areas and well notice how many access there for the
chestnut collection in the autumnal period: here also has an example of
the biggest structural diversity due to the presence of
considerable dimension trees, and so of ecological niches completely
different from these
present in the garrigues of the Pisan versant. Between the cultivated zones
must to
signal the olive-groves, allotments of sowed and grounds aimed at vegetable
growing, often placed in the immediate neighbourhood of the human
habitations, scattered in many points above all in the Pisan versant. The
creation of these environments has mostly happened to holm wood expenses,
that have above all on the versants complaints to South and to sun. | | | | | |
THE ILEX WOOD | | | | |
The ilex wood, where still it exists, is frequently
constituted by trees of many dimensions or from individuals to bushy
bearing which compose themselves in little woods or extensive stains
much different in relation to the places: in the undergrowth are
presents ivy, cyclamens, ruscus, etc.
here and there we meet open spaces in which install themselves
numerous species arbustive and herbaceous then they will find plentiful in
the sectors more sunny and with ground richer than skeleton; we
remember the cysts, the brooms and the euphorbias.
On the Occidental side of the Pisan Mountain, prevalently in the zone
placed between San Giuliano and Asciano, various cork-oak individuals are found, in the last centuries they were
probably more numerous and were introducing themselves with models of
remarkable dimensions. To this purpose is useful remind that into the
library of the Department of Botanical Sciences of the University of
Pisa is preserved a table with his plan is entirely obtained from a
transverse section of a trunk of such tree. This cork-ilex coming from
the Riparbella hills, died in 1886 because decrepit. On a paper glued on under itself the table appear,
between the other, these handwritten words "...the plant had to be really colossal ... from the
trunk and the branches of it were obtained a hundred and one plough stumps and about
ten tons of coal." | | | | |
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