Tuscany's quiet Cerbaie hills turn out to hold 1,107 plant species

They are not much to look at from the road — low hills in northern Tuscany, Italy, whose highest point is barely 117 metres (about 384 feet). But botanists from the University of Pisa have now counted 1,107 species and subspecies of plants growing in the Cerbaie hills, in a survey published in the journal Italian Botanist that combined a decade of fieldwork with more than 160 years of records. That is about 86 more kinds of plants than models predicted for an area of its size — a richness created by acidic soils, streams and shady little valleys sitting side by side. Knowing exactly what grows there is the first step to keeping it.