CLIMAX AND SERAL COMMUNITIES 



199 



communities. These serai terms have the same relation to the 

 climax terms as the word boy has to the word man. Obviously, 

 neither the serai nor the climax terms should be used until a 

 community has been sufficiently studied so that it is known whether 

 it is a climax community or not. Until such study has been made 

 the vegetation should be referred to simply as a community. 



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Fig. 87.— a pigweed colonj^ on a bare area created by man. 



A colony is a small group of plants occurring on an otherwise bare 

 area (Fig. 87). It, therefore, is a morphological part of an associes 

 in a very young stage of its development. The term family is some- 

 times applied to such a morphological part of a very young com- 

 munity when it is composed of plants belonging to a single species 

 and especially when the plants are all descended from a single 

 ancestor. Since family is used in taxonomic botany in an entirely 

 different sense its use here is unfortunate and it seems better to call 

 all of these parts colonies whether they are composed of one or 

 more than one species. 



A colony is usually easily recognized because it occurs on an 

 otherwise bare area. However, a colony is not necessarily of small 

 ex-tent. An entire abandoned field may be occupied by a colony of 

 Russian thistles and a field of corn or of any other crop plant may 

 properly be considered a colony. More typical, however, is a colony 

 of sand binding grass on a wind-fonr.ed sand dune, a colony of fire- 

 weeds on a burned forest area, or a colony of lichens on a rock 

 surface. 



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