Climbing plants are an important component of the composition and richness of plant species in tropical forests. However, research focused on this group is still rare in Brazil. This paper aimed to characterize the floristic composition and ecological aspects of climbing plants in three fragments of semideciduous forest in Uberlândia, MG. For the floristic surveys plants were collected monthly from March 2010 to March 2011. The species were classified according to climbing habit, climbing strategy and dispersion. To calculate floristic similarity between the fragments we used the Jaccard index. We identified 99 species in 62 genera and 25 families. A total of 71, 53, and 52 species were recorded, respectively, at Fazenda São José (FSJ), Fazenda Experimental do Glória (FEG) and Fazenda Irara (FAI) fragments. The most species-rich families were Bignoniaceae (16 species), Malpighiaceae (12), Sapindaceae (11) and Fabaceae (10). Overall, there was a predominance of woody and anemochoric species. Species with tendrils were most numerous in FSJ, while in FEG and FAI there was a predominance of twining species. Floristic similarity between fragments was less than 50% indicating low similarity between the study areas.
host tree; climbing strategy; floristic similarity
