Abstract: Białowieża Forest is an extremely valuable and diverse area in which two approaches to nature conservation are used. On the one hand is passive conservation, a conservative approach whose purpose is to protect natural processes by reducing human intervention. On the other is active conservation, which aims to take steps to protect nature, including by maintaining areas in certain successional stages.
Dracocephalum ruyschiana L., a Eurasian continental species with a fragmented distribution, undoubtedly requires active conservation. Its contiguous range extends from the Eastern European Plain to Eastern Siberia. It is found in scattered European sites from the southern Scandinavian Peninsula to the Alps, the Balkan Peninsula, and the Caucasus, and as far the west as the Pyrenees. In Poland,
D. ruyschiana has been known to occur in about 50 locations. Most locations were in north−eastern Poland, as far west as the valleys of the Noteć and the lower and middle Vistula rivers. Unfortunately, at the moment, many of these sites were not identified for a hundred years or more. In recent years,
D. ruyschiana has been found mainly in north−eastern Poland (Knyszyn Forest, Biebrza Valley, and Wigry National Park).
D. ruyschiana was considered extinct in Białowieża Forest until its recent discovery. In Poland,
D. ruyschiana is most often found in thermophilic edge communities of the
Trifolio−Geranietea class, on exposed sites and in forest gaps, and in fresh mixed broadleaved forest habitats, where vegetation belongs to the thermophilous oak forest,
Potentillo albae−Quercetum. The new locality of D. ruyschiana was discovered in the Hajnówka Forest District in Białowieża Forest. The new stand is located in an area of active forest conservation in fresh mixed broadleaved forest (LMśw), oak−hornbeam forest community (9170).
D. ruyschiana is located in a 0.35 ha second−growth forest, established in 2017 in a gap created as a result of sanitary cuts carried out in 2012−2015 related to an outbreak of spruce bark beetle. The specimen of northern dragonhead had a height of about 40 cm with 15 generative shoots and 1 vegetative shoot.
Key words: active conservation, critically endangered, flora, Hajnówka Forest District, Northern dragonhead