Technical terms appearing on various FloraGREIF pages but mostly in habitat descriptions.
| Term |
Explanation |
| Balks |
Field boundary |
| Barkhans |
Moving parabel shaped desert dunes |
| Bel |
Pediment (shallow foothill region of mountains, in arid regions filled with rubble) |
| Bel, proluvial |
Coarse to fine sediment accumulated at the foot of a slope building a deltaic lobe, created by weathering of the rocks |
| Biurgun (e.g. feather grass-biurgun-Ephedra associations) |
Russian for Anabasis salsa (Stipa-Anabasis-Ephedra community) |
| Cast (marmot cast) |
Marmot mound, burrow |
| Chee (chee grass stands, chee grass thickets) |
Achnatherum splendens (Trin.) Nevski |
| Fans (alluvial fans) |
River sediment in fan-like deposition |
| Gnawers‘ holes |
Mound or burrow of rodents |
| Goletz, goltzy |
High-montane (alpine) tundras or typical soils of alpine tundra, Russian plural of goletz |
| Gorge |
Canyon, ravine |
| Hammadas |
Stony deserts |
| Hypnaceous (e.g. hypnaceous bogs / forests) |
Refers to the moss family of Hypnaceae within the order of Hypnales |
| Kolki (birch kolki) |
Insular groves (usually with birch or aspen) in forest-steppe areas (Grubov 2001: 156) |
| Melkozem (e.g. melkozem-rubble slopes) |
Russian, refers to fine soil texture such as chalk, loam or silt (fine soil-rubble slopes) |
| Placer (e.g. rock placers in alpine belt) |
Accumulation of minerals in sediments such as sand and gravel formed by deposition |
| Puffy / puffed (puffy / puffed solonchaks) |
Refers to the swelling and shrinking dynamics of clayey soils in a semi-/arid climate |
| s.m. |
Meant is meter above sea level (a.s.l.) |
| Sagon |
Cattle or sheep pen, the place where lifestock stays overnight (often to shelter them from carnivores) |
| Saltwort (e.g. black saltwort deserts) |
Halophytic plants, such as glasswort (Salicornia) or further similar species of Chenopodiaceae |
| Sasa solonchak |
Alkaline soil with saline upper crust on the surface, devloping in a semi-/arid climate under ascending groundwater in dry regions of Central Asia |
| Sayr |
Narrow, canyon-like beds of a temporary river (Arabic wadi, Afrikaans rivier) |
| Sazes |
Habitats with constant regime of moistening by groundwaters in dry regions of Central Asia |
| Schistose (schistose slopes) |
From schist, a group of medium-grade metamorphic rocks, a kind of slate |
| Sheep’s-fescue |
Festuca ovina L. (and related microspecies) |
| Solonchaks |
Alkaline soil with saline crust on its surface in a semi-/arid climate |
| Solonetz |
Alkaline clayey sodium soils with swelling and shrinking dynamics in a semi-/arid climate |
| Sondoks |
Saline soils |
| Spur (tops of spurs) |
Foothills, rock overhang |
| Tailing (upper parts of tailings) |
Originally means coarse sediment, partly applied for pediment, similar to ‚bel‘ |
| Tailing, proluvial |
Coarse to fine sediment accumulated at the foot of a slope building a deltaic lobe, created by weathering of the rocks |
| Takyr |
Soil or surface of clayey soils forming a dry crust with shrinking fissures on the surface, often with cyanobacteria layers when wet |
| Takyred (takyred depressions, lowlands) |
Refers to the dried crust with shrinking fissures at its surface, often heavily saline |
| Talus |
Surface of broken rocks found on mountain slopes and at the base of cliffs (pieces usually of larger size than scree) (Pyak et al. 2008) |
| Tansy |
Yellow small herbs, it may refer to various families |
| Taro (e.g. taro deserts… – habitat data of Astragalus gubanovii Ulzij. in Plants of Central Asia, Vol. 8c, 2004) |
Colocasia esculenta (L.) Schott, a tropical plant without occurrence in continental Central Asia. (This term is probably a misapplied translation.) |
| Toyrim |
Saline soil places, clayey solonchaks |
| Tugai forests |
Riparian Populus gallery forests in arid regions of Central Asia |
| Urema |
Decidous floodplain forest (Grubov 2001: 21) |
| Wormwood (e.g. wormwood-grass steppes) |
Species of Artemisia (sage) growing as dwarf shrubs |
| Wortwood (e.g. wortwood-saltwort desert) |
Frequent orthographic mistake in English-translated floras, meant is wormwood – a species of Artemisia (sage) growing as dwarf shrubs |
| Zagon |
Cattle or sheep pen, the place where lifestock stays overnight (often to shelter them from carnivores) |
data compiled by: A. Zemmrich
