The Group Of Understory Herbaceous Vegetation Stand At Tropical Lower Mountain Forest Of Mount Salak, West Java

Abstract

This study aimed to determine the groups of herbaceous vegetation stands at tropical lower mountain forest of Mount Salak, Bogor, West Java. Hierarchical cluster analysis method was used for grouping herbaceous vegetation stands by Importance Value Index. The distance between stands was determined using Sørensen index while the grouping of stands made by the farthest distance method. The difference in stand's vegetation structure among the groups was tested with Kruskal-Wallis statistics. There were 4 stand groups (SG) formed at 80% distance of Sørensen index. The difference between SG was most visible through floristic composition. The most difference of SG was between SG 2 and SG 4, where the most dominant species that make up these SGs were Nephrolepis exaltata, Isachne globosa (family: Poaceae), and Etlingera megalocheilos (family: Zinggiberaceae) for SG 2 and E. megalocheilos, N. exaltata and Dinochloa scandens (family: Poaceae) for SG 4. Species N. exaltata, Scleria purpurascens (family: Cyperaceae), and Selaginella plana (family: Selaginellaceae) were found throughout the entire SG. There were no significant differences among the SG in the case of Shannon-Wiener’s Diversity Index, Pielou's Evenness Index, Simpson's dominance index and the number of species (P ≥ 0.05). There was a decreasing trend of vegetation structure's value from SG 2 to SG 1.