Article

Spanish Sierra Nevada has one of the richest and most original flora of the western Mediterranean region with a large number of endemic species. The area is considered one of the biodiversity "hotspots" of the Mediterranean Basin. Its high summits are particularly important from a conservation point of view and its flora is extremely vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. This paper shows a detailed analysis of the flora in the upper vegetation belt (cryoromediterranean zone) of Sierra Nevada, based on an updated delimitation of its area (38.76 km2). In total, 185 species belonging to 44 families and 116 genera were catalogued. The most relevant families were; Poaceae (24 taxa), Asteraceae (20) and Caryophyllaceae (16). Despite its small territory, the high vegetation belt is prominent in endemic taxa (37.3%), 55 of which do not exceed the range of Sierra Nevada. The number of threatened taxa is 39 and the biological spectrum shows the dominance of hemicryptophytes (63.16%) and chamaephytes (26.31%). We believe that this high mountain flora data could be a strong indicator of the long-term climatic variations and might therefore be used in the future to observe possible upward movements of the taxa.