Diversity of herbaceous plant communities in different types of urban blocks in the town of Blois (France).

Five ecological habitats based on visual soil features (sandy vs. more compact soils), shading by tree canopy (yes or no) and mowing (regular or once per year). The five habitat types considered were: lawn on topsoil (lawn); lawn on sandy substrate (sandy); lawn on topsoil with canopy cover (wooded); lawn on sandy substrate with canopy cover (wooded sandy); urban meadows mowed once in a year (meadows).

In each city-block, the herbaceous communities of each habitat wer inventoried using a number of 50 cm*50 cm quadrats depending on habitat surface. The total number of inventoried quadrats across the 129 city-blocks was 1706. The dataset is the result of an exhaustive sampling of 178 vascular herbaceous species in each quadrat, associated with Braun-Blanquet values for species cover.