Talk:Southern Urals

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Page scope

Southern Urals is a Growing Region: a named region that sits above Growing Areas and below the regional complex and gene pool. It covers Bashkortostan and Chelyabinsk Oblast, on both sides of the southern Ural Mountains: the weedy and wild-growing hemp found there and the hemp sown as a crop. Kurgan and Orenburg oblasts are not part of the region.

Data verification

Check the main page for the sources behind each statement. Discuss the boundary, the provinces the region takes in, and the accessions and news items that belong to it here.

Discussion

Why the region is on the map

Weed-flora studies of Bashkortostan: Khasanova, Yamalov and Korchev (2014) list weedy hemp among the adventive weeds common to the field communities of the Southern Urals in both 1980–83 and 2002–13; Yamalov, Shaikhislamova and Mirkin (2007) map a hemp field-weed association over the Uchaly district and the north and centre of the Sibay district of the Bashkir Trans-Urals (fieldwork of 2002–03); Khasanova and co-authors (2016) give its constancy in the fields of the Cis-Urals in 1980 and 2010.
The Chelyabinsk Oblast office of the federal drug-control service wrote in 2009 and 2010 that the climate of the Southern Urals gives rise to whole patches of wild hemp and poppy, and counted 110 hectares in 2009 and 352 hectares in 21 districts in 2010 (EAN). The regional police reported a large patch in Troitsky District in 2026 (Argumenty i Fakty, 22 July 2026).
In Bashkortostan the police found 31 patches in the summer of 2025 and named Davlekanovsky, Meleuzovsky and Blagoveshchensky districts (Argumenty i Fakty, 18 August 2025; GorObzor, 23 August and 16 September 2025).
Hemp as a crop: hemp areas by canton in 1927 and the rise of technical crops by 1925 (Bashkir Encyclopedia); the sheet MW0317295 from Birsk, 1923, «Сеется» ("sown"); the sown area of Bashkortostan in 2023 and 2024 (Bikbaeva and Islamgulov 2025); hemp growers in Chelyabinsk Oblast (Serkov and co-authors 2024).

The name

"Southern Urals" (Южный Урал) is the name the sources use. Khasanova, Yamalov and Korchev (2014) use it for the fields of Bashkortostan, and the drug-control service of Chelyabinsk Oblast uses it for that oblast (EAN, 2009 and 2010). No source draws one line round both provinces: the region joins them because the sources for each use the name for their own province.

Growing status

The status is Active. Weed-flora fieldwork runs to 2013, police and drug-control reports of wild-growing hemp run from 2009 to 2026, and hemp was sown in Bashkortostan in 2023 and 2024. No source says that hemp has stopped growing in either province.

How the border is drawn

The border is a proxy drawn on two whole provinces, the Republic of Bashkortostan (OpenStreetMap relation 77677) and Chelyabinsk Oblast (77687), about 231,600 km² together. Encyclopædia Britannica gives their areas as 143,600 and 87,900 km².
The weed-flora studies cover Bashkortostan and the drug-control reports Chelyabinsk Oblast, so the region takes both provinces whole. Kurgan Oblast and Orenburg Oblast are not part of it: none of the sources cited for the region concerns them.
The infobox point (54.34, 58.01) is the centre of the shape.
The border is not drawn from accession or news points.

Accessions

The three sheets gathered by L. A. Utkin near Troitsk in 1941 and 1943 lie inside the border: Utkin s.n., Troitsk (1941) (fallows), Utkin s.n., Troitsk (1943) (steppe slope) and Utkin s.n., Zolotaya Sopka (1943) (kitchen gardens). Their labels do not say the plants were sown, so they are not attached to the region; they are described on the page.
The four seed lines that Khalifa Genetics and Landrace Bureau say come from near Lake Chebarkul fall inside the border: KHA-RUS-CHE-0120190001, RLB-RUS-CHE-0120210001, RLB-RUS-CHE-0120240001 and RLB-RUS-CHE-0120240002. Their place of origin is the companies' statement, with no village or date of collection, so they are not attached to the region; the page names them.

Sources

Weed-flora studies: Yamalov, Shaikhislamova and Mirkin (2007), Растительность России; Khasanova, Yamalov and Korchev (2014), Известия Самарского научного центра РАН; Khasanova, Mirkin, Naumova and Lebedeva (2016), Вестник Академии наук Республики Башкортостан.
Drug-control and police reports: EAN (25 August 2009, 13 November 2009, 23 November 2010) for Chelyabinsk Oblast; Argumenty i Fakty (Chelyabinsk, 22 July 2026; Ufa, 18 August 2025) and GorObzor (23 August and 16 September 2025, by Gulnaz Utyaganova), from the press services of the regional police.
Bashkir Encyclopedia: the articles on the Birsk, Sterlitamak and Zilair cantons, on agriculture, and on the Trans-Ural Bashkirs. Semenov, Географическо-статистический словарь Российской империи (vol. 1, 1863): Askino.
Crop studies: Bikbaeva and Islamgulov (2025), Агропродовольственная политика России; Serkov, Kabunina and Rostovtsev (2024), Международный сельскохозяйственный журнал.
Geography: Encyclopædia Britannica and the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (3rd edition), the articles on Bashkortostan and on Chelyabinsk Oblast.
Herbarium sheets: the Moscow Digital Herbarium entry for MW0317295 (Birsk, 1923, A. K. Noskov); the GBIF entries for the three Utkin sheets.

Not used

Bikbaeva and Islamgulov (2025) also give 1,400 hectares of hemp sown in Chelyabinsk Oblast in 2023. They cite it to an article of 2020 and to a conference paper of their own, and the figure is not used.
A report of hemp planted in flower beds in the centre of Zilair in 2021 (Snob, 5 June 2021) concerns ornamental planting in a village square.
A study of weeds in maize crops (2020) found weedy hemp in three of four zones of the eastern Urals, across Chelyabinsk, Sverdlovsk and Kurgan oblasts and the Bashkir Trans-Urals, without saying in which province each find lay.

Open questions

Whether the Bashkir Trans-Urals, the Uchaly district and the north and centre of the Sibay district, is a growing tract of its own is not settled by one study.
Whether eastern Orenburg Oblast belongs to the region: plant-health reports of 2024 name districts with hemp across the whole of that oblast, and none of the sources cited here concerns it.