Future of Botanical Research in Alaska— Wiggins 115 



treatments. The wealth of material in his book marks an ac- 

 complishment of considerable magnitude. It signals the em- 

 barkation upon a study involving a specialist's interest in a 

 particular portion of the earth and the plants that it supports. 

 In this study he has devoted himself to the taxonomic, phyto- 

 geographic, and ecological problems that are common to widely 

 separated areas, which have a high degree of similarity in the 

 types of habitats available to plants. He has kept this in mind 

 throughout the full course of his work and has presented evi- 

 dence that this similarity in the range of habitats in widely 

 separated areas has resulted in a degree of similarity in the 

 floral make-up among them that is greater than had been be- 

 lieved by most botanists. In this way, the botany of Alaska, 

 under the hands of Hulten, has taken on an international 

 aspect very different from the international scope of the botany 

 involved when Hooker and Arnott (7) described plants col- 

 lected in Alaska over a century ago. They— Hooker and Arnott— 

 were pioneering in the early phases of botany, interested in 

 what grew in particular areas. Our Scandinavian colleague, 

 on the other hand, has placed the emphasis on the why and 

 the hoiu of the problems of plant distribution and phylo- 

 genetic relationships. Neither type of emphasis is out of place. 

 The second logically follows the first. The main differences lie 

 in the lapse of time between the taxonomic approach and the 

 vegetational approach, not in the absence of either. 



But to return to a more nearly chronological summary of the 

 development of botanical research in Alaska may I go back to 

 the time when the taxonomic investigations began to be accom- 

 panied by those involving the ecological aspects of botany? At 

 this time the floristic approach was being supplemented by the 

 vegetational slant. The differences between these two types of 

 botanical research were succintly summarized by Dr. Polunin, 

 who wrote, "The flora of an area is the sum total of different 

 'kinds' of plants inhabiting it, no matter whether they are scarce 

 or plentiful. The vegetation, on the other hand, is concerned 

 largely with the question of relative abundance, being the total 

 'display' that the plants make collectively" (14, p. 1). The trend 



