D4.1 - Niveau 3 : Bas-marais riches en bases, y compris les bas-marais eutrophes à hautes herbes, suintements et ruissellements calcaires
Wetlands and spring-mires, seasonally or permanently waterlogged, with a soligenous or topogenous base-rich, often calcareous water supply. Peat formation, when it occurs, depends on a permanently high watertable. Rich fens may be dominated by small or larger graminoids (Carex spp., Eleocharis spp., Juncus spp., Molinia caerulea, Phragmites australis, Schoenus spp., Sesleria spp.) or tall herbs (e.g. Eupatorium cannabinum). Where the water is base-rich but nutrient-poor, small sedges usually dominate the mire vegetation, together with a "brown moss" carpet. Hard-water spring mires (D4.1N) often contain tufa cones and other tufa deposits. Excluded is the water body of hard-water springs (C2.1); calcareous flushes of the alpine zone are a separate category (D4.2). Rich fens are exceptionally endowed with spectacular, specialised, strictly restricted species. They are among the habitats that have undergone the most serious decline. They are essentially extinct in several regions and gravely endangered in much of central and western Europe.
Schoenus nigricans-dominated or -rich communities of rich fens of nemoral, Pannonic and Pontic Europe, of wide distribution, though less common in Alpine and peri-Alpine regions than the next unit, and confined to lower altitudes. Rushes, Juncus subnodulosus in British and western continental inland fens, Juncus balticus in dune-slack fens, are often abundant. Other accompanying species include Carex lepidocarpa, Carex hostiana, Carex panicea, Carex pulicaris, Eriophorum latifolium, Molinia caerulea, Dactylorhiza incarnata, Dactylorhiza praetermissa, Dactylorhiza purpurella, Dactylorhiza traunsteineri, Dactylorhiza traunsteinerioides, Epipactis palustris, Parnassia palustris, Pinguicula vulgaris, brown mosses and, locally, Pinguicula lusitanica and Drosera anglica. These communities have enormously regressed, particularly in northern and northwestern continental Europe, and are extinct in many regions.