Analysis of the outdoor collection of herbaceous plants of the Botanical Garden of the Lobachevsky University

The article presents an overview of the history of the herbaceous plants’ outdoor collection at the NNSU Botanic Garden since 1934, as well as description of the region’s environmental conditions. Taxonomic analysis of the herbaceous plants collection, geographical and ecological analyses of introduced angiosperms have been performed. As of today, the outdoor herbaceous vascular cryptogams and angiosperms’ collection of the NNSU Botanic Garden consists of 1293 names from 93 families. There are 368 wild-growing species and 21 naturalized alien species (adventive and ergasiophyton). Some 439 species (without varieties and forms) out of the cultivated angiosperms are the introduced species that are not represented in the surrounding botanical-geographical sub-areas of the Nizhny Novgorod Oblast; 30 of these species are in the Red Book of Russia. The majority of species come from Asia (30,98%), where species from East Siberia, Far East of Russia and East Asia are represented the most. Plants represented in Europe make 16,40%, North America–16,17%. Mainly the plants grow on the bare rocks, screes, limestone outcrops, and different kind sands (23,01%), flat land species make 38,95% of the collection, the true mountain species compose of 38,72%, the rest range both in plains and mountains.