NOTES AND COMMENTS 



Dr. Eduard Riibel has recently called attention (Journal of Ecology, 

 December 1914) to the confusion that has arisen in plant geography 

 through the use of popular names for the designation of important 

 plant communities. The words macchia, garigue, tomillares, and 

 phrygana, for example, are shown to be used in different parts of south- 

 ern Europe for vegetations that are closely similar, while such terms 

 as heath and steppe are applied to very unlike plant communities. The 

 action of the Brussels Congress in voting to retain these and other 

 vernacular names in the technical terminology of plant geography 

 has raised many voices in dissent. The plant geographers of the world 

 are pre-eminently a body of men who can rise above any national 

 bias in favor of the terms that have originated in their own particular 

 language. There is no reason whatever for laying any weight on the 

 matter of priority in seeking a rational and acceptable system of 

 nomenclature for plant communities. We have perpetually before us 

 the spectacle of taxonomy, devoutly sworn to the principle of priority, 

 and thereby chained to the imperfect type specimens, the incomplete 

 knowledge and the false judgment of a century or more ago. There 

 is no valid reason why plant geographers should not arbitrarily create 

 a system of naming for vegetational groups, — a system that would be 

 international, logically complete, and authoritative through general 

 agreement, without being inflexible or so sacrosanct that it could not 

 be abolished whenever it was desirable to do so. Just such a scheme 

 of nomenclature was proposed by Brockmann-Jerosch and Riibel 

 in their Einteilung der Pflanzengesellschaften nach Okologisch-Physiog- 

 nomischen Gesichtspunkten, of which an English edition is now in 

 preparation. There is much to be said in favor of the use of such a 

 system, and the matter deserves careful consideration at the hands 

 of plant geographers, and the fullest possible discussion. If by the 

 adoption of such a system it should become possible to eliminate all 

 further discussions of nomenclatorial matters in plant geography and 

 ecology, and if the energy that has gone into them heretofore could be 

 liberated and directed to some of the fundamental problems in these 

 lines of work, the occasion would be one for profound congratulation. 



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