One of the most important and most easily measurable physical characteristics of plant
seeds is their weight, which influences and indicates crucial ecological processes.
Seed weight affects spatial and temporal dispersibility, and can also influence seed
predation and the germination, growth and survival of seedlings. Providing trait data
for species missing from international databases is key to promote studies that advance
our understanding of the functioning of plant communities and ecosystems, which is
an essential issue in the face of the global climate change and biodiversity loss.
Compared to species from Western and Northwestern Europe, those with an Eastern or
Central European centre of distribution are underrepresented in most international
trait databases. Therefore, the creation of specific trait databases is key to help
regional studies. In this respect, it is important not only to collect fresh seeds
for weight measurements, but also to measure and process data of seeds preserved in
collections and make them available to the broader scientific community. In this data
paper we provide seed weight data to fill in missing trait data of plant species of
Central and Eastern Europe. Our dataset includes weight measurement for 281 taxa of
the Central European flora including also some cultivated and exotic species. The
seeds were collected between 1971 and 2021 mostly in Central Europe. One part of the
measured seeds was collected in the last decade, the other part is from an older seed
collection, but all seeds were measured recently. For each species, we collected a
minimum of 3 × 100 intact seeds, if possible. The seeds were air-dried at room temperature
(approximately 21 °C and 50% relative humidity) for at least two weeks and measured
with an accuracy of 0.001 g using an analytical balance. The thousand-seed weights
reported here were calculated based on the measured values. Our goal for the future
is to incorporate the seed weight data reported here in a regional database (Pannonian
Database of Plant Traits – PADAPT) that gathers plant traits and other plant characteristics
for the Pannonian flora. The data presented here will facilitate trait-based analyses
of the flora and vegetation of Central Europe.
