Herbaceous and woody plants providing resources for bees in a semi-arid tropical climate

Dataset of plant inventory and phenology of herbaceous and woody strata in in three 0.5-ha plots located in the Vale do Curu Experimental Farm of Unversidade Federal do Ceará, Pentecoste, Ceará State, Brazil. The climate zone corresponding to semi-arid (BSh) and the plots were installed in Caatinga vegetation.Each plot was divided into 50 10x10 m subplots to identify the floristic composition and the abundance of each species and to facilitate the phenological evaluation. The dataset includes 4 spreadsheet: 1) inventory of all woody individuals in the plots with stem perimeter at the ground level equal to or greater than9 cm. 2) phenology of woody plants int the plots. the flowering intensity of each plant observed with flowers,using the semi-quantitative method of Fournier (1974). This method estimates visually the percentage of the canopy covered with flowers, classifying it in one of the five cover classes(0 to 4): 0 = absence of phenophase, 1 = 1-25%, 2 = 26-50%, 3 = 51-75%, and 4 = 76-100%.3) floral cover of herbaceous plants in 25 of the 50 10x10msubplots of each plot. To assess the flowering in herbaceous strata we used the semi-quantitative method of Daubenmire(1959), which also uses cover classes to estimate the population abundance of each species. To this aim we used a 50x50 cm PVC square. We used six classes toestimate floral cover per species: 1 = up to 5%, 2 = 6-25%, 3 = 26-50%, 4 = 51-75%, 5 = 76-95%, 6 = 96-100% . 4) List of species recorded in the three plots, their classification in growth and life forms, indicating whether bees visit the species and the resources collected by the bees.