Abstract
This illustrated electronic book is about the natural history of the Kurdish autonomous region of Iraq and its surroundings. It focuses on the Orchidaceae botanical family as a windows on the biodiversity of the North-Western Zagros, part of the Irano-Anatolian biodiversity hotspot.A general introduction presents the main aspects of orchids as their biology, their classification, their traditional use (salep), their ecological significance and their presence in the Kurdistan Region areas (KRAs).A biogeographical analysis presents the main factors influencing the biodiversity of the KRAs: the landscape, the climate, the geology, the natural vegetation, the nature protection and the human activities.This fruitful collaborative project aims to fill a gap about the biodiversity knowledge in the hope of setting an example and a basis for future works on orchids or other taxa, by the same team or other ones in the KRAs. The studied territory is divided in accordance with the Flora of Iraq traditional classification. The genera and species nomenclature follows an up-to-date and argued point-of-view. Each species is described according to its morphological characteristics, its field ecology, its global biogeography, its regional chorology (both from classical literature and from current field data) and its phenology (flowering period).A monographic chapter presents the 26 species historically found in Iraq, all of them at least in the Kurdistan Region areas if not exclusive. Three of these species were not recently found on the field, but also insufficiently sought (Dactylorhiza iberica, Epipactis veratrifolia subsp. veratrifolia, Orchis punctulata). Inversely, four of these species were recently discovered as new for Iraq according to the team’s published works. None of them are strictly endemic to the studied territory but two are Zagrosian endemic (Ophrys bornmuelleri subsp. carduchorum and Ophrys umbilicata subsp. khuzestanica) and six are Cilician-Zagrosian or Levantine-Zagrosian subendemic species or subspecies. Most of them are present and generally widely distributed in the northernmost areas (mountain forests zone). Only four are also historically known in the foothill zones (Anacamptis collina, Anacamptis coriophora subsp. fragrans, Epipactis veratrifolia subsp. veratrifolia, Ophrys mammosa subsp.mouterdeana), where they were not recently seen but also not sought either.