Assessment of the nursery species pool for restoring landscapes in southeastern Brazil

Brazil has committed to fulfilling international restoration goals and to enforcing environmental legislation that will require private landowners to undertake ecological restoration of 21 million hectares of degraded and deforested landscapes. To support a broad range of restoration practices, a well-established supply chain capable of representing regional plant diversity is essential. This study investigated the restoration species pool in native plant nurseries in Sao Paulo state, located in southeastern Brazil, and evaluated their geographic distribution, similarity of their plant stocks, and the proportion of species represented from regional floras. Despite a lack of technical assistance and a significant presence of nonnative species (126 species, average 7.5 species/nursery), we found an impressive native species richness in plant nurseries (561 species, average 86.4 species/nursery) from both the Atlantic Forest and Cerrado domains, representing 38-44% of regional floras. There was a huge bias toward tree and shrub species (96.6%) and an absence or underrepresentation of other growth forms, as well as of savanna specialists, animal-dispersed, and threatened species. The dissimilarity of species observed among the different nurseries surveyed highlights their role in representing regional diversity, which reflects their regional seed collection practices. Effective assistance and training are essential to address issues related to misidentification of species, underrepresentation of most functional plant groups, and the presence of nonnative species, as well as to support the supply chain, which is currently undergoing a market downturn.