PLANT GEOGRAPHY 



Bij RONALD GOOD 

 University College, Hull, Yorkshire 



So INTIMATELY is tliG liistoiy of man related to the distrib-ution of plants that 

 it is scarcely an exaggeration to suggest that the study of plant geography must 

 have begun with the first dawnings of man's consciousness of the potentialities 

 of his environment, but today most botanists are content to claim for it a history 

 of more comprehensible length. Some date its beginning from the days of Tour- 

 nefort, who flourished about 1700 and to whom is attributed the first recognition 

 of latitudinal and altitudinal zonation and the way in which these are the reflec- 

 tion of one another. Others call attention to Linnaeus' classification of plant 

 habitats — his Stationes Plantarum — in the Amoenitates. The commonest practice, 

 however, is to regard von Humboldt, the great German naturalist, as the father 

 of plant geography. His travels in South America in the opening years of the 

 nineteenth century resulted in one of the first scientific descriptions of equatorial 

 vegetation, and the recognition of his fundamental contribution (von Humboldt, 

 1817). Humboldt has the merit of emphasizing that the first chapter of this 

 science was, as it has been in so many others, essentially one of exploration 

 and description. 



In another sense, also, von Humboldt is a notable landmark. He is the con- 

 necting link between the great voyages of geographical exploration in the latter 

 half of the eighteenth century, among which those of Captain Cook are so 

 prominent, and the series of great scientific expeditions which may be considered 

 to have begun with the voyage of the Beagle from 1831 to 1836. In view of the 

 great distinction of Charles Darwin's subsequent studies in botany one cannot 

 but regret, on reading his account of this voyage, that he was not then more con- 

 cerned with plants. His preoccupation at that time with geology and zoology, an 

 emphasis which later had such profound consequences, is evident, and it was not 

 until a few years later, when the young Joseph Hooker set out in the Erehus on 

 a voyage lasting from 1839 to 1843, that a real botanical milestone was reached. 



It is not easy now to realize that these two series of expeditions — the great 

 voyages of geographical adventure on the one hand and the great scientific 

 explorations initiated by the voyage of the Beagle on the other — ^were in fact 

 separated by little more than half a century for they seem to belong to different 

 ages. True, these years had been memorable ones and had witnessed the vast 

 liberating forces of which the American War of Independence and the French 

 Revolution were expressions, yet even this does not adequately account for the 

 difference of outlook that distinguished the second quarter of the nineteenth 

 century from the third quarter of the eighteenth. It seems clear enough that there 

 must have been in the latter period a tremendous intellectual leaven at work which 

 was destined in the space of a comparatively few years to lighten the whole body 



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