Structure and landscape assessment on outstanding plant communities of West Lake Scenic Area in Hangzhou

Taking the West Lake Scenic Area in Hangzhou as the example, this paper investigated and assessed the structure and landscape of several kinds of outstanding urban landscape plant communities, to explore the relationship between the structure and landscape of landscape plant community. The findings indicated that the structure of the riparian plant community and the multilayer plant mass were better than that of the open forest and grassland community and the dense forest community, however, the values of landscape assessment of the riparian plant community, the multilayer plant mass and the open forest and grassland community were generally high. The landscape value had some tendencies along with the structure change: 1) The landscape values of multilayer communities, including trees, shrubs and grass, were generally high; 2) The more average diameter breast height of the plant was, the older the plant was, and/or the more plentiful the crown was, the higher the landscape value of the community was; 3) The plant communities with obvious aspection change had generally high landscape values; 4) If the proportion of the upper (above 5m), middle (0.5m–5m) and bottom story (below 0.5m) in a community was approximately 1∶2–3∶3–4, namely, the shape of the community was pyramidical, its landscape value was high; 5) The communities with complex structure and/or distributing agglomeratively had high landscape values; 6) The communities with plenty of healthy and beautiful plant individual had high landscape values; 7) The reasonable density is advantageous in enhancing the landscape value of a community; 8) The communities comprising 5–10 tree species, and/or with dense ground covers, and/or with moderate canopy density and coverage had high landscape values.