A research on Kocaeli geophytes and their ornamental purposes for sustainable landscape design

Abstract

Turkey is among the richest countries in terms of biodiversity because of having different ecologies and climatic characteristics. Turkey's flora consists of approximately 12000 plant species (vascular plants). Geophytes create an important part of the floristic richness of Turkey. Geophytes are considered as ornamental plants in landscape design and they are used in many areas such as beds, border, rock garden, lawn areas etc. The use of these plants in the design can be increased to ensure the continuity of natural species. it was aimed to make a selection of the natural geophytes of Kocaeli province and continuity of visuality. Color is an important characteristic which increases the visual value of the plant. Colors affect human physiology and emotions. A strong visual effect can be created with geophytes flowers. In this study, geophytes in Kocaeli flora have been analyzed and these which are possible to be used in landscape design and practices have been chosen. The geophytes in Kocaeli, have been found to be rich in terms of taxa. It has been determined that 114 geophytes belonging to 13 families exist in Kocaeli flora. It has been determined that a large part of the geophytes have white flowers (18.42 %) and it follows yellow (15.79 %), purple (12.28 %), pink (11.40 %) respectively and other colors. In addition to the flower colors, the color effects were also revealed in the study.