MEADOWS

MEADOWS, a type of flora, primarily represented by the communities of perennial grass mesophyes, usually with a predominance of cereals. There are forest, dry, lowland, floodplain, highland, and saline M. in the RB. True dry meadows (with meadow grass, meadow fescue, colonial bent grass, etc), and steppe meadows (with narrow‑leaved bluegrass, sheep’s fescue, Koeleria delavignei, etc) are spread in the Northern part of Bashkir piedmont of the Urals. Lowland M. (with meadowsweet, creeping buttercup, fox sedge, etc) are spread in conditions of excessive moisturization in depressed reliefs. Floodplain meadows situated near river channels with domination of quitches (lady grass, awnless brome) and central floodplains (with meadow foxtail, meadow fescue, etc) are widely spread in the Bashkir piedmont of the Urals and in the Sothern Bashkir Trans‑Urals. Saline M. (with strawberry clover, saline longspur, Hordeum brevisubu- latum, etc) are located in the steppe zone. There are two subtypes of mountain M.: low‑mountain M. (with an abundance of wild grasses, angelica, goutweed, burnet with cocksfoot and heath false bromegrass) and high‑mountain M. (with predominance of Alpine knotweed). M. experience increased anthropogenic activity, especially due to cattle grazing, which cause pasture digression and formation of communities with the predominance of a variety of low grass (small white clover, silverweed, sweet plantain, etc).