DIMENSIONAL FEATURES OF CENOPOPULATIONS OF SOME SPECIES OF MEDICINAL PLANTS IN THE CONDITIONS OF NORTH-EAST UKRAINE

The article presents the results of the study of the size characteristics of cenopopulations Hypericum perforatum L. (Hypericaceae) and Saponaria officinalis L. (Caryophyllaceae), which are formed in different phytocoenoses of NorthEast Ukraine. We have studied six cenopopulations Hypericum perforatum from softwood, mixed and broadleaf forests and seven cenopopulations of Saponaria officinalis from meadows with domination of Elytrigia repens (L.) Nevski. During the research there were used a morphometric analysis, a complex of methods of statistical and mathematical processing of data, as well as the original approach to assess the dimensional structure of populations. We show that the implementation of morphological variability (variation of morphological parameters of plants within a single population) and morphological plasticity (the change in mean values of morphological parameters in the "transition" from population to population) is an integral part of the complex of processes and transformations that ensure the existence of cenopopulations of Hypericum perforatum and Saponaria officinalis in the north-eastern part of Ukraine. Cenopopulations of each species there has been erected phytocoenoses in which the greater (or significant) share of the values of the leading morphological parameters reaches the largest or the smallest values. These phytocoenoses can be considered as potential centers of procurement of medicinal raw materials. The results of the morphometric analysis provide an opportunity to determine the characteristic dimensions plants of Hypericum perforatum and Saponaria officinalis in each of the phytocenoses and to define the identification tags of their model individuals. An analysis of the dimensional structure of Hypericum perforatum and Saponaria officinalis cenopopulations has shown that they are mostly formed from plants whose size corresponds to 3-4 adjacent dimensional classes of height and leaf area and, respectively, 6-11 and 4-10 variants of the combination of dimensional classes of height and leaf area surfaces with IDSS values varying from 24.0-44.0% and from 16.0 to 40.0%.