What sets the vegetation of Amasya apart is less the number of species the province hosts than the fact that a share of them grows naturally nowhere else in the world. The province lies on the transitional strip between the humid Black Sea belt and the continental climate of Central Anatolia, and that strip is broken up by folded mountains, deep valleys, lake shores and slopes that open onto the steppe. In the same season, moisture-loving Euro-Siberian plants flower on one slope while the drought-tolerant shrubs of the Irano-Turanian steppe flower on the next. The large number of endemic species rests on this small-scale variety. The layers of the forest and the relationship between climate and vegetation are the subject of a separate article; here the focus is on the province's distinctive species, the collectors who first carried them to Europe, the plants rediscovered after more than a century, and the studies that have recorded the flora of the region.

The Number of Endemic Species

According to the provincial culture and tourism directorate's record of the vegetation, Amasya is quite rich in endemic plants and contains 109 species and 246 subspecific taxa (varieties). Another assessment gives the figure as 245 endemic taxa. A 2019 review of the province's ecotourism potential, for its part, writes that Amasya holds 801 species in 367 genera belonging to 79 families, of which 175 species in 90 genera and 29 families are endemic. The difference between 109, 175 and 245 may stem from the criteria used in counting taxa and the year of the count; the sources do not explain it. Endemic means growing only within a particular geography, here within the borders of Turkey. As the Amasya University botanist Cengiz Yıldırım noted in early 2026, 1,991 of the roughly 12,000 plant species found in Turkey can be seen in Amasya, while the number of endemic species across the country is about 3,800. Yıldırım points out that the whole of the European continent holds some 15,000 species, which brings the plant diversity of Anatolia close to that of a continent.

One reason for this richness is the province's floristic position. According to the researchers who studied the flora of Mount Sakarat, the region lies in the north-east of the Central Anatolian sector of the Irano-Anatolian province of the Irano-Turanian floristic region and forms a transition zone with the Euxine region. Because this belt, which encircles the Central Anatolian steppe from the north, harbours both Euxine trees and shrubs and steppe plants, the plant geographer Michael Zohary named it the xero-Euxine belt. A transition zone of this kind, under both the humid influence of the Black Sea and the dry influence of Central Anatolia, keeps the species of the two regions side by side on different slopes of the same mountain. It should nonetheless be said that the endemism rate remains well below the Turkish average: according to the comparison drawn by the Sakarat researchers, the rates found in studies in the province mostly lie between 7 and 13 per cent, whereas for the flora of Turkey as a whole the figure is around 31 per cent. Amasya's endemic wealth comes less from high rates on individual mountains than from the gathering of very different habitats within a small area.

The survey results show that these numbers are not spread evenly across the province. Around the Amasya-Akdağ-Lake Boraboy line and its surroundings, 29 of the province's endemic taxa are found; for this reason the area around Lake Boraboy is regarded as the most important endemic plant area in the province. Boraboy Lake Nature Park in Taşova covers 255.34 hectares and is protected for its natural forests and wildlife habitats as well as for its endemic and endangered plant species. Six of the endemics documented within the park are Campanula latiloba, Campanula pterocaula, Symphytum bornmuelleri, Heracleum platytaenium, Hesperis buschiana and Digitalis lamarckii. Of these, Symphytum bornmuelleri takes its name from the German botanist who, as told below, made the first systematic plant collections in the region.

The Vegetation of Amasya in Older Sources

Before scientific botany reached Amasya, the plants of the region appear in the eyes of those who described the city as gardens, flowers and summer pastures. In the first volume of his Amasya Tarihi (History of Amasya), Hüseyin Hüsameddin describes the Çakallar ridge south of the city as a mountain rising some two hundred metres above the ground, flat on top and shaped like a long cradle; its level ground is called Hamza Düzü, and vineyards cover it on every side. In spring, the author writes, Çakallar's "red roses and black-spotted tulips" adorn the ridge like a bride, and in describing the scene he quotes an old quatrain beginning with the line "Cennet gibidir sûy-ı cenûbunda Çakallar" ("Like paradise is Çakallar on its southern side") (Hüsameddin, Amasya Tarihi, vol. 1, e-book p. 82). The black-spotted tulips are tulips with a dark blotch at the base; which species they belonged to cannot be told from this description. Every year the local press still reports snowdrops, crocuses and violets flowering among the rocks of the same ridge as soon as the snow melts.

Hüsameddin's notes on the eastern edge of the city also shed light on the history of its plants. According to his description, the Savakça quarter in the east of the city was bounded on the east by Mount Lokman; the upper reaches of the stream called Soğuk Pınar were "a most pleasant forest" with hazel and other fruit trees in abundance, and the cold water of the stream turned the mills and watered the vineyards (vol. 1, e-book pp. 78 and 124). Mount Lokman would later enter the botanical literature as the place where the local endemic known as bağ havacivası was first collected in 1889. Describing the Akdağ district that covered the eastern part of the Amasya kaza, the author also writes that the mountain's summer pastures were ample, its winter quarters good, its water plentiful and its air healthy, that most of the sanjak's sheep grazed there in summer, and that its butter, cheese and yoghurt were famous throughout the Pontic region (vol. 1, e-book p. 187). Hüsameddin gives the height of the mountain as about twelve hundred metres; by modern measurement Akdağ Tepesi, the highest point in the province, stands at 2,061 metres. The difference may arise because it is unclear whether the author meant the foothills where the district lay or the summit. Grazing on this scale over centuries also forms the historical background to the degradation of vegetation observed today in the upper reaches of Akdağ.

The First Botanical Collectors

The plants of Amasya began to reach European herbaria in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The most important name in this process is the German botanist Joseph Bornmüller (1862-1948), curator of the Haussknecht Herbarium in Weimar from its foundation in 1886 until 1938. Bornmüller came to Amasya in 1889 and 1890 and from there explored the provinces of Kastamonu, Çorum, Samsun, Tokat, Yozgat, Sivas and Kayseri. The 1889 collection comprises about 2,300 specimens and the 1890 collection about 3,500. According to Asuman Baytop's study based on the records of the Flora of Turkey, Bornmüller's Turkish specimens include 189 type specimens representing 161 new taxa, and part of these types were collected in Amasya. Bornmüller passed through Amasya again in 1892 and in 1899, when he travelled on from there to Bursa by way of Bilecik and Mudanya. At least 25 species in the Turkish flora bear his name.

A good number of the species of the Amasya flora still cited today came out of these collections. Bağ havacivası, collected on Mount Lokman in 1889, was published in 1894 under the name Alkanna haussknechtii. Scorzonera amasiana, described from Bornmüller's 1889 collection, takes its name directly from the city and was published in 1904 under the joint authority of Haussknecht and Bornmüller. Sideritis amasiaca and Onobrychis bornmuelleri, counted among the endemics of Mount Sakarat, are a legacy of the same period; one is named after the city, the other after its collector.

In the same years another collector was at work in Merzifon. Johannes Jacob Manissadjian, born in Niksar in 1862 to an Armenian father and a German mother, studied natural history in Berlin and in 1890 was appointed professor of botany at the American Anatolia College in Merzifon, where he founded a museum. Among the bulbous plants he collected in the central Black Sea region he found new species, which were published by the Austrian botanist Josef Freyn. Silene manissadjianii, one of the endemics of Akdağ, and Colchicum manissadjianii bear his name. Manissadjian also supplied bulbs from the Pontic region to commercial nurseries in the Netherlands, above all to the firm of Van Tubergen; among them were Allium tubergenii and Amasya's lost tulip. Arrested in 1915, Manissadjian was released after the American missionaries at the college intervened and was sent with his family to an agricultural unit run by Germans in Amasya. In 1917 he was again permitted to carry out research and assembled for the college a collection of about 7,000 items, ranging from shells and minerals to plants, mammals and birds, whose catalogue he kept in his own hand. The college moved from Merzifon to Thessaloniki in 1924, its museum closed in 1939, and 130 of Manissadjian's plants were sent to the herbarium of the Faculty of Science at Ankara University. He himself emigrated to the United States and died in Detroit in 1942.

The Lost Tulip: Tulipa sprengeri

The longest story in the flora of Amasya belongs to Tulipa sprengeri, known in the botanical literature as the "lost tulip". The species was first collected in 1892 by Mühlendorff, a German gardener then living in Amasya. Mühlendorff sent the bulbs to Carl Ludwig Sprenger, owner of the horticultural firm Damman & Co. in Naples; Sprenger, suspecting a new species, passed the specimens on to the English botanist John Gilbert Baker. Baker published the species in The Gardeners' Chronicle in 1894, naming it in Sprenger's honour. Two years later, in 1896, Manissadjian, then teaching at the American College in Merzifon, collected the same plant again, and Freyn described it a second time under the name Tulipa brachyanthera; this name is now treated as a synonym of Tulipa sprengeri. The original specimens of both names are kept in the herbarium of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

After 1896 the tulip was never seen again in the wild. Between 1895 and 1898 the Damman firm sold large numbers of bulbs to European gardeners, and Manissadjian had sent bulbs to Van Tubergen and other nurseries; the removal of so many bulbs from the wild is regarded as the main cause of the species' disappearance. While its natural presence in Turkey was considered at an end, the tulip survived in more than thirty botanical gardens and in private collections in Europe. Genetic studies of the plants grown at Kew have shown that these cultivated stocks retain a relatively wide genetic diversity; the old story that all garden plants descend from a single bulb mistakenly sent by Manissadjian to Van Tubergen therefore appears unfounded. Its late flowering in June, later than most tulips in Turkey, the absence of a blotch at the base of its red tepals and its bright red filaments set it apart from related species.

To bring the species back to its homeland, a conservation project called "The Lost Tulip Returns Home" was launched after a meeting organised by the Nezahat Gökyiğit Botanic Garden in 2016. Bulbs brought from the Great Dixter garden in London flowered in Istanbul for the first time in 2016, and the first seeds were brought from abroad in 2017. The seeds were sown at the Nezahat Gökyiğit Botanic Garden and at the Erzincan Horticultural Research Institute, while Yeditepe University took up bulb production through tissue culture; plants raised from seed began to flower from 2023 onwards. Because the old records of the tulip gave no information about its habitat, seeds were sown in November 2024, together with the General Directorate of Nature Conservation and National Parks, in areas of Amasya representing different habitats. One of the sowing ceremonies was held on the Çakallar ridge, which Hüsameddin described as adorned in spring with black-spotted tulips, at the high Çakallar site that was then under snow; the seeds, obtained from bulbs brought from England, were to be monitored for five years. These sowings showed a high rate of germination in 2025 and leaf growth in 2026. The number of seeds put into the ground is given differently in the sources: the Governor of Amasya, Önder Bakan, who attended the ceremony, spoke in 2024 of some 40,000 seeds, while the botanic garden's director Kanoğlu said in 2026 that 45,000 seeds propagated at the garden had been sown at various locations. In the press the project's name also sometimes appears as "The Lost Tulip Returns Home from Exile".

Independently of the project, in the first days of June 2026 Ercan Eftelioğlu, who had worked for many years as a building caretaker in Amasya and spent his weekends on nature walks, photographed an unusual-looking tulip while out with a walking group. The photographs reached the director of the botanic garden, Salih Sercan Kanoğlu, through Yılmaz Seven, a former regional director of the State Hydraulic Works who had earlier encouraged young people in the area to search for the tulip, and from Kanoğlu they went to İsmail Eker, a tulip specialist at Bolu Abant İzzet Baysal University. According to Eker, photographs sent from the region before had always turned out to show common species such as Tulipa armena or Tulipa raddii; this time the images showed the lost tulip. On 11 June 2026 the two researchers visited the site with Eftelioğlu and Erdem Genç, who knew the area well, and confirmed the species on living plants. The location of the site has not been disclosed, in order to protect the plant.

According to the article Eker and Kanoğlu published the same year in Bağbahçe Bilim Dergisi, the population found lies far from settlements and is natural, with no connection to the plants sown under the project, which have not yet reached flowering stage. The only known population covers an area of less than 0.2 square kilometres and consists of fewer than 1,000 individuals. The plants grow at 1,140-1,170 metres, among scrub and under trees at the edge of fields. Measurements from the natural population showed that the species can reach 85 centimetres and carries between 4 and 9 leaves, and that the yellow-centred flower colour Freyn described in 1896 was due to the yellowing of a dried herbarium specimen. The authors propose moving the species from the earlier category of "extinct in the wild" to "critically endangered". The main threats identified are intensive farming and cattle grazing at the site and, in the longer term, climate change. According to the article, the reasons the tulip went unfound for 130 years include its narrow range, its small number of individuals, its flowering in June and the fact that most floristic surveys are carried out in early spring; the very general locality data in the old records also condemned researchers to search only small parts of a wide area.

Bağ Havacivası and Scorzonera amasiana

A fate similar to the lost tulip's was shared by bağ havacivası (Alkanna haussknechtii). This member of the borage family, collected by Bornmüller on Mount Lokman in 1889 and described as a new species in 1894, has white and yellow flowers and grows only in the central Black Sea region, and according to its known range only in Amasya. Arzu Cansaran came across the plant around the village of Yuvacık in 1994 during her master's research and at that time also saw it rarely on the Şeyhcui quarter side of Mount Kırklar and around Kaleköy; however, as its habitats were degraded by human activity, the species could not be collected again for many years. Some sources state that the species was not seen in the wild after 1896; this does not quite agree with Cansaran's 1994 observation and most probably reflects the fact that the 1994 find was not widely published.

Bağ havacivası was found again in 2017 near the village of Aydınca, through the work of researchers from Amasya University and teams from the nature conservation directorate under the National Biodiversity Inventory and Monitoring Project. The first count recorded 111 individuals, and in 2018 the number of individuals at three separate sites was found to exceed 300. As part of this area lay within the reservoir of the Aydınca Dam then under construction, plant specimens were moved to higher ground and placed under monitoring. According to information released in 2025, under a project for species that would be submerged by the reservoir, the plants were transferred to a new habitat suited to their nature; the drought of 2024, however, caused a decline in the population.

Scorzonera amasiana, which takes its name directly from the city, is a narrowly distributed species of the daisy family known only from a few localities in Amasya province. Described from type specimens Bornmüller collected in 1889, it could not be collected again until 1993, when it was found near Amasya. In 2008 Karaer and Celep reported three more small populations, drew attention to their small size and vulnerability to human impact, and called for urgent conservation measures. In 2009 Muhittin Dinç and Yavuz Bağcı recorded the species from a new locality in Amasya and argued that Scorzonera ekimii, recently described as a separate species, is in fact the same species as Scorzonera amasiana.

Endemics Known by Local Names

Some of the region's endemic plants are known by names the local people gave them long before their botanical names. Hazeran, kuduz otu, akça çiçeği, dolama otu, mürdümük, bac biber ağacı, kaside, geven, yalancı havacıva and tüylü keten are foremost among these names. The official record, which lists these plants by their local names, does not specify which Latin species they correspond to; since folk names often cover more than one species, matching them to a particular scientific name can only be done by examining herbarium specimens collected in the region. The name yalancı havacıva on the list may point to the same genus Alkanna as bağ havacivası, but the sources do not make this match explicitly. The list should therefore be read as an inventory of the herbs the people of the region knew and named. Examples in which the folk name and the scientific name are given together are fewer. The review of the province's ecotourism potential, noting that the regional flora is well suited to botanical tourism, cites as examples the Amasya tulip (Tulipa sprengeri), nevruz (Iris histrioides), emzik otu (Wiedemannia orientalis) and ak tiken (Lycium anatolicum). The records also mention an endemic cherry species growing in the area; however, since its name and range could not be verified in the sources available, it is only mentioned here.

Studies on the Flora of Amasya

The systematic study of the province's flora advanced alongside the development of Turkish botany in the second half of the twentieth century. Floristic work in the country gained a framework with the nine-volume Flora of Turkey and the East Aegean Islands, edited by P. H. Davis in Edinburgh, and the supplementary volumes that completed it, and the country was surveyed in squares using Davis's grid system. In this system, the study areas around Amasya mostly fall within square A5, while Mount Sakarat in the south-east of the province falls within A6. One of the first comprehensive studies in the region was Akdağ (Amasya) Bitkileri (The Plants of Akdağ, Amasya), carried out by Abdülkerim Alpınar at the Faculty of Pharmacy of Istanbul University between 1976 and 1979 and submitted as a doctoral thesis. This study recorded 96 families, 424 genera and 887 taxa from Akdağ and showed that 62 of them, or roughly 7 per cent, were endemic. Among the endemics reported from Akdağ are Dianthus setisquameus, Polygonum samsunicum and Silene manissadjianii. The article Amasya ve Akdağ Florası Üzerine Yeni Gözlemler (New Observations on the Flora of Amasya and Akdağ), published by Baytop and Alpınar in 1980, complemented this study.

Akdağ continued to attract researchers in the following decades. In 2020 Cengiz Yıldırım, Erkan Yalçın, Arzu Cansaran and Alpınar, author of the study made forty years earlier, published the vascular plant diversity of the mountain anew in the journal Türler ve Habitatlar. Another study published in 2022 classified the plant communities of Akdağ, which lies in the transition zone from the Irano-Turanian region to the Euxine, and identified thirteen plant associations and two sub-associations in the area. Of these, three associations and two sub-associations belonging to the forest, seven associations of mountain steppe and one of coniferous cushion scrub were described as new to science.

The immediate surroundings of the city were also studied separately. In fieldwork in 1994, Arzu Cansaran and Mustafa Aydoğdu collected 670 specimens from the area between Amasya Castle and the villages of Vermiş and Yuvacık and identified 420 taxa belonging to 75 families and 287 genera. Of these, 46, or 10.95 per cent, are endemic; the Irano-Turanian element accounts for 15.71 per cent, the Mediterranean element for 9.52 per cent and the Euro-Siberian element for 7.38 per cent. The study was published in 1998. In the black pine forest of Mount Kırklar, the annual development of six endemic species, Hyacinthella micrantha, Bellevalia gracilis, Iris galatica, Scutellaria salviifolia, Asyneuma limonifolium subsp. pestalozzae and Digitalis lamarckii, was followed between December 1997 and August 1999. The observations showed that the flowering dates of these species sometimes departed from those given in the Flora of Turkey, and that climate, altitude, slope aspect and whether the forest was open or closed were more decisive for their development than soil properties.

Other studies followed one another, each dealing with a separate mountain or valley. In the same year, 1998, Kurt and colleagues contributed to the flora of the Kardağ, Kırlar and Buzluk mountains lying between Amasya, Yozgat and Çorum. The flora of Kuşpınartepe was examined as a master's thesis at Gazi University in 1988, and the flora of Çakır Dağı (Merzifon) was likewise the subject of a master's thesis in 2005. The 2007 study by Cansaran, Peker and Yıldırım turned to the area between Direkli (Göndes) village, the town of Yassıçal (Ebemi) and Abacı village, and the 2009 study by Kaya, Cansaran and Ertekin to Mount Karaömer. In 2007 Cansaran, Yıldırım and Peker also made a comparative assessment of the results of all floristic research carried out in Amasya up to that time. The endemism rates of these smaller studies are close to one another: 6.89 per cent with 33 endemics on Kuşpınartepe, 7.09 per cent with 38 endemics in the Amasya-Yozgat-Çorum area covering the Kardağ, Kırlar and Buzluk mountains, 9.23 per cent with 18 endemics on Çakır Dağı and 11.6 per cent with 44 endemics in the area between Direkli, Yassıçal and Abacı. Between Amasya, Yozgat and Çorum the Irano-Turanian element is far ahead with 100 taxa (18.65 per cent), while on Kuşpınartepe the Euro-Siberian element comes first.

The Eğerli, Tavşan, Sakarat and İnegöl Mountains

The study of Mount Eğerli is one of the most detailed within the provincial flora. Between 1996 and 1998 Cansaran collected some 2,000 plant specimens in the field and identified 650 taxa belonging to 70 families and 298 genera. Of these, 55 were new records for square A5 of the Davis grid. The largest family was the daisy family (Asteraceae) with 78 species, followed by the legume family (Fabaceae) with 77, and the most numerous genera were Astragalus with 23 species and Silene and Lathyrus with ten each. Phytogeographically, 102 taxa (15.69 per cent) were of Irano-Turanian origin, 97 taxa (14.92 per cent) of Euro-Siberian origin and 46 taxa (7.07 per cent) of Mediterranean origin, while 375 taxa proved to be widespread across more than one region or of uncertain origin. Eighty taxa in the area, or 12.30 per cent, are endemic.

The flora of Mount Tavşan (Merzifon) was published by Korkmaz, Yalçın, Engin and Yıldırım in 2005. Sixty-three endemic species were recorded in the area and the rate of endemism was calculated at 13.37 per cent; Euro-Siberian elements accounted for 22.07 per cent, Irano-Turanian elements for 13.37 per cent and Mediterranean elements for 5.73 per cent. The same study's data look different in the comparative table published in 2010 by the Mount Sakarat researchers: there Mount Tavşan is given 65 endemic taxa and an endemism rate of 10.94 per cent, with 141 taxa (23.73 per cent) for the Euro-Siberian element, 71 taxa (11.95 per cent) for the Irano-Turanian element and 30 taxa (5.04 per cent) for the Mediterranean element. Since the reason for the difference between the two sources is not explained, both sets of figures are given here.

Research on Mount Sakarat between 2004 and 2005 yielded 494 taxa belonging to 78 families and 286 genera from 2,000 specimens; a 2019 assessment of the same data gives the number of genera as 283. Here the daisy family led with 70 species and the legumes with 46, and Astragalus, with eight species, was the largest genus. The Euro-Siberian element is the strongest phytogeographical group with 127 taxa (25.71 per cent), the Irano-Turanian element has 43 taxa and the Mediterranean element 24; the number of endemics is 40 (8.1 per cent). That the Irano-Turanian element outweighs the Euro-Siberian on Eğerli, while the picture is reversed on Sakarat, shows that the two mountains present different faces in terms of plant geography. The 40 endemic taxa in the mountain's six distinct vegetation types, made up of forest, subalpine, steppe, rocky, wet grassland and field vegetation, were assessed against IUCN criteria by Mesrur Ümit Bingöl and colleagues in 2019. On this basis Onobrychis bornmuelleri is endangered, Potentilla cappadocica, Sideritis amasiaca and Crocus speciosus subsp. ilgazensis are near threatened, and the remaining 36 taxa are of least concern. A third of the Sakarat endemics are Irano-Turanian (32.5 per cent) and a fifth Euro-Siberian (22.5 per cent) in origin; the endemic species are concentrated above all in the legume and mint families, and in terms of life form 80 per cent of them are perennial herbs whose buds sit at the soil surface.

Of Sakarat's 494 taxa, 300 belong to the widespread or uncertain-origin group. The mountain's endemic list also includes species tied to the region even by their scientific names. Alongside Sideritis amasiaca stands Astragalus densifolius subsp. amasiensis; the words "amasiaca" and "amasiensis" in the two names refer directly to Amasya. The list also marks as endemic an oak subspecies, Quercus macranthera subsp. syspirensis, together with Allium olympicum, Verbascum abieticolum, Crataegus tanacetifolia, Lonicera caucasica subsp. orientalis, Phlomis russeliana, Phlomis armeniaca, Onosma armenum, Jurinea pontica and Scorzonera eriophora. The presence of an oak subspecies and a hawthorn species on this list shows that endemism is not confined to herbaceous plants and that forms peculiar to the region also occur in the mountain's tree and shrub layer.

On Mount İnegöl in Gümüşhacıköy, some 1,700 specimens were collected between 2005 and 2008, and 661 species and infraspecific taxa belonging to 291 genera in 71 families were identified. Of these, 103 are of Euro-Siberian origin (15.6 per cent), 99 Irano-Turanian (15.0 per cent) and 43 Mediterranean (6.5 per cent); the remaining 418 taxa (63 per cent) are in the multiregional or unknown group. The families with the most taxa were the daisy family (Compositae) with 87, the legumes (Leguminosae) with 69, the mint family (Labiatae) with 60, the mustard family (Cruciferae) with 41 and the borage family (Boraginaceae) with 34. Seventy-seven taxa in the study area (11.65 per cent) are endemic. The rate of endemism lies between 11.65 and 12.30 per cent on Eğerli and İnegöl, at 10.94 or 13.37 per cent on Mount Tavşan depending on the source, at 10.95 per cent in the area between the castle and Vermiş, at 8.1 per cent on Sakarat and at roughly 7 per cent on Akdağ.

The Mosses of Akdağ

While so much work has been done on vascular plants, the province's mosses long went unnoticed. Although Akdağ is counted among the important flora regions of Turkey, its moss flora had not been studied before 2009. The examination of 1,500 specimens collected from 37 stations on the mountain between 2009 and 2011 revealed 178 taxa belonging to 69 genera in 26 families. In the Henderson grid system used for mosses Akdağ falls in square A3, and 94 of the taxa found are new records for this square. The locality data for Grimmia crinitoleucophaea and Barbula enderesii were reported as first records for Turkey, while a few taxa such as Encalypta spathulata, Schistidium dupretii and Tortella bambergeri were recorded from Turkey for the second time. Because the dominant tree cover was noted for each sampling station, the study also provides a detailed field record of how the mountain's forest belts are distributed by altitude, and it shows that a small plant world, still not fully known, persists on rock faces, at the foot of trunks and on the forest floor.

The Tersakan Valley and Yedikuğular

Unlike the mountains, valley floors and plain margins show an entirely different face of the plant communities. In their study published in Flora Mediterranea in 2006, Celep, Aytaç and Karaer reported 457 taxa belonging to 301 genera in 74 families from some 1,000 specimens collected in the Lower Tersakan Valley between 2001 and 2004, and found that 50 of them (10.94 per cent) were endemic to Turkey and that 11 taxa were new records for square A5. Among the phytogeographical elements the Irano-Turanian leads with 77 taxa (16.8 per cent); the Euro-Siberian element was given as 39 (8.5 per cent) and the Mediterranean as 35 taxa (7.6 per cent), while the remaining 306 taxa are in the widespread or unknown group. The most numerous genera are Astragalus and Alyssum with seven species each. Some compilations report the valley's endemism rate as 16.8 per cent; the article's abstract shows that this figure belongs to the Irano-Turanian element, not to the endemics. That Karaer and Celep, two of the valley's researchers, reported new populations of Scorzonera amasiana two years later also shows the importance of this area for the province's narrowly distributed species.

Around the Yedikuğular Bird Sanctuary in Suluova, the picture is more modest. The 400 specimens collected by Cansaran, Dursun and Yıldırım in the growing seasons between 2013 and 2015 revealed 211 species and infraspecific taxa belonging to 51 families and 143 genera. Eleven of them are endemic, giving an endemism rate of 5.21 per cent. The Irano-Turanian element is represented by 27 taxa (12.8 per cent), the Euro-Siberian by 20 (9.47 per cent) and the Mediterranean by 14 (6.63 per cent); 150 taxa (71.1 per cent) are multiregional or of unknown origin. Among the families, the daisy and legume families with 27 taxa each (12.79 per cent), the grasses with 19 (9 per cent), the mint and borage families with 12 (5.68 per cent), the rose and buttercup families with 10 (4.73 per cent), and the mustard and carrot families with 8 taxa (3.79 per cent) share the top five places. It is not surprising that the endemism rate remains low in a site with the character of a wetland and farming plain; endemics mostly gather on rocky, steep slopes away from human influence.

The Geography of the Study Areas

To understand the differences in endemism rates, one has to look at the structure of these areas. The highest point in the province is Akdağ Tepesi at 2,061 metres; Mount Karaömer rises to 1,979 metres and Mount Sarıtaş to 1,159 metres. The mountains generally run east to west. Akdağ is bounded to the south by the Yeşilırmak and to the north by the Şeyhsuyu and Kocaalan streams. The Tersakan stream rises at 1,925 metres on the slopes of Akdağ, takes in the overflow of Lake Ladik, passes through Havza and joins the Yeşilırmak within the borders of Amasya; 41 kilometres of its 100-kilometre length lie within the province. Comparing the studies in the province, the Sakarat researchers find that Euro-Siberian elements come first on Kuşpınartepe, Mount Tavşan, Mount İnegöl and Sakarat, and Irano-Turanian elements in all the other areas. In their interpretation, since Irano-Turanian elements spread in open, steppe-like ground and Euro-Siberian elements in humid meadows, scrub and woodland, the lead of the Irano-Turanian element in most studies shows that the province's vegetation has long suffered heavy degradation; on Sakarat the reversal of the picture owes much to the mountain's well-developed forests. The same researchers attribute the presence of Mediterranean elements in every study to the influence of the Yeşilırmak: these species have settled along the river, mostly on the alluvial flats of the lower reaches.

Lake Boraboy, for its part, is one of the relatively few landslide-dammed lakes in Turkey (Tortum, Sera, Zinav, Yedigöller and Abant also belong to this group). It lies at an altitude of about 1,045 metres, covers 10.75 hectares and is 11 metres deep at its deepest point. Beech, Scots pine, cedar and black pine grow around the lake. What matters most for plant diversity are the endemic herbaceous species hidden beneath and around this forest. An ethnobotanical inventory prepared in 2005 for the villages of central Amasya, Bağlarüstü, Boğaköy and Vermiş and the towns of Yassıçal and Ziyaret is cited among the studies documenting the local use of plants; matching folk names to scientific names becomes possible through inventories of this kind.

Comparison and Conservation

The figures from these studies cannot simply be added together, because the areas differ in size, the sampling years and methods vary, and it is normal for the same taxon to occur in several areas. Even so, a common pattern can be discerned: the daisy and legume families lead almost every list, large genera such as Astragalus make up a significant share of the species count, and the distribution of phytogeographical elements shifts markedly with the aspect of the slope and with altitude.

It is reported that in recent years the vegetation of the summer pastures and grazing lands has been damaged by causes such as excessive use of pesticides and fertilisers, overgrazing and the clearing of fields, and that in the upper reaches the bedrock has been exposed in places. Because endemic plants depend on a narrow area, they are more vulnerable to these pressures than the vegetation in general. The lost tulip, bağ havacivası and Scorzonera amasiana are concrete examples of this vulnerability; no trace of any of the three was found for more than a century, and their known populations today are confined to small areas. Commercial bulb collecting at the end of the nineteenth century played a large part in the disappearance of the lost tulip. Cengiz Yıldırım recalls that attempts to smuggle plants abroad are still encountered today, and that the seeds of the Amasya tulip, which could not be found in the wild for years, had to be brought back from abroad; he stresses how important it is for rural residents to report suspicious collectors to the relevant authorities. Dam and road building, construction and changes in climate pose a further threat to narrowly distributed species; bağ havacivası, moved from the reservoir area of the Aydınca Dam, and its population, which declined after the drought of 2024, are a recent example. The Red Data Book listing Turkey's threatened plants (Ekim et al., 2000) and the List of Turkish Plants (Güner et al., 2012) are the basic works consulted in monitoring the status of species in the region's flora.

Chronology

1889: Joseph Bornmüller comes to Amasya; he collects bağ havacivası on Mount Lokman and the type specimens of Scorzonera amasiana around the city. The year's collection amounts to about 2,300 specimens.

1890: Bornmüller's second Amasya collection (about 3,500 specimens). J. J. Manissadjian is appointed professor of botany at the American Anatolia College in Merzifon.

1892: The German gardener Mühlendorff collects the lost tulip in Amasya and sends its bulbs to Naples.

1894: J. G. Baker publishes Tulipa sprengeri and Bornmüller publishes Alkanna haussknechtii as new species.

1896: Manissadjian collects the lost tulip again; Freyn describes it as Tulipa brachyanthera. This is the tulip's last record in the wild.

1904: Scorzonera amasiana is published.

1924: Anatolia College moves from Merzifon to Thessaloniki; its museum closes in 1939.

1976-1979: Abdülkerim Alpınar studies the flora of Akdağ; 887 taxa, 62 of them endemic.

1993: Scorzonera amasiana is rediscovered near Amasya.

1994: The flora of the area between Amasya Castle, Vermiş and Yuvacık is studied; Cansaran sees bağ havacivası around Yuvacık.

1996-1998: The flora of Mount Eğerli is studied; 650 taxa, 80 of them endemic.

2004-2005: The flora of Mount Sakarat is studied; 494 taxa, 40 of them endemic.

2009-2011: The moss flora of Akdağ is studied at 37 stations; 178 taxa, two first records for Turkey.

2016: The "Lost Tulip Returns Home" project begins; bulbs brought from London flower in Istanbul.

2017: Bağ havacivası is rediscovered near the village of Aydınca; the first seeds of the lost tulip are brought from abroad.

2024: Seeds of the lost tulip are sown in November at trial sites in Amasya, the Çakallar site among them.

2026: The lost tulip photographed by Ercan Eftelioğlu is confirmed as a natural population by İsmail Eker and Salih Sercan Kanoğlu on 11 June.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

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Other sources

  • Celep, F., Aytaç, Z. and Karaer, F. (2006). Plant Diversity and Distribution in the Lower Tersakan Valley (Amasya-Turkey). Flora Mediterranea, 16: 295-332.
  • İhlas News Agency reports: the rediscovery of bağ havacivası (28 May 2018) and its transfer to a new habitat (2 October 2025); spring flowers and biopiracy in Amasya (11 February 2026).
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Online sources