Aleksinsky Bor

It is based on a reserved 100-year-old pine woodland which is located in 8 blocks (6, 13-16, 25-27) of Aleksin forest area. Most of the territory is covered with wood, mainly with a pine forest stand of natural origin. The trees in the pine-wood are very decorative and play both a cultural and a recreational role. The ground is broken, the loam is sabulous, the climate is moderately continental. An average temperature of the warmest month is about +15C, the coldest one - 10-12C. Average month amount of precipitations - 80-90mm. The territory of the protected area looks like a steep downward slope of the right Oka's band with a system of gullies hollows debouched into Oka. Karst landforms are common - they appear like roundish downs, about 5-10 meter in diameter, depth - 1-2m with pretty round walls and flat bottom. Soils are mostly sod-podzol and sabulous. In the places of Limestone outlet, especially on steep south slopes, the grounds are dark and have nuciform structure though because of intensive washout they are not very thick (15-25 cm). There are lots of pineries combined with broad-leaved species and small -leaved ones. In average, species composition of tree layer looks this way: pine - 63-100%, oak - about 5%, common and pubescent birch - about 4%; quaking asp - 20%; linden - 5% and grey alders - about 3% in inundated part of the forest. Pine has mainly natural origin, its age is from 50 to 150 years old. Most trees (81%) is about 120-140 years. There is the underwood in the main part of the area and it's featured with nut-threes, twinberry, wartybark euonymus; Indian cherry is widely spread here. It is an American bush, appeared in the woodland of the pine wood in the end of XIX century. Sometimes you can meet there juniper and mezereon, these are very rare plants in Tula region. The grass-side contains mainly spices which are typical for broadleaved woodlands - aise-weed, hairlike sedge, mercury, jengibire, etc. But it differentiates with patchiness caused by soil, light conditions and slope exposure. That's why in the sandy soils mixed with high crown closure the cover of green moss and taiga boreal plants (wintergreen, prince's pine, red bilberry, blueberry, European starflower, etc.) are developing there. In those areas rear species of insects and mushrooms were found. On sunny meadows of south slopes thanks to a limestone rock nearby herbage is rich with forest-steppe plant species, they are mountain sedge, cowslip lungwort, broad-leaved epipactis, etc. Non-forest community is presented mostly by meadows of various moisture degree. The most valuable of all discovered grasslands in Aleksin pine forest is steppificated marge, located on Oka's south-west hillside. You can find endangered species of plants here, for example, veronica spuria, bloody crane's-bill, snowdrop anemone, ground virginsbower, black false hellebore. Rare species of butterflies can also be found here. It is worth mentioning, that Aleksin pine forest, which used to be an example of perfect ecosystem, presenting the variety of local plant kingdom, is now not that valuable. Some species - such as lady's-slipper orchid (listed in Red Data Book of the Russian Federation), spotted lady's slipper, creeping lady's-tresses, Neottianthe cucullata (listed in Red Data Book of the Russian Federation), twinflower, common heather, houseleek, bearberry - have disappeared. Population of blueberries and cranberries have significantly decreased. The introduction of weed and wilding plants into plant formation is quite common in these places. For example, American introduced species, Canadian Shadbush are quite common now. West-european ornamental plants - dwarf periwinkle, granny's bonnet and Sweet William - were found wilding. Up-to-date floristic list includes 198 species of vascular plants. Among listed there is 420 species of lepidopterous insects, 318 of coleopterous and 67 of hemipterous ones. During the research 15 species of mammals, 48 species of birds, 4 species of reptiles and 3 species of amphibians were found. Among them no endangered species in need of protection and population planning were detected.