282 Eduard Riibel 



assimilate if the temperature should rise above zero. Swiss 

 sociology has always favored the study of meadows, from the 

 time of Stebler and Schroter's classical studies. It has much to 

 do with alpine as well as lowland agriculture. 



Arrhenatheretaha, manured meadows, are about the same all 

 over Europe, since similar practice has brought about a conver- 

 gence everywhere of the same factors. Caricetalia curvulae and 

 Salicetalia herbaceae, "Schneetalchen"-Gesellschaften, grouping 

 around the twist sedge association (of Cm-ex curvula) and the 

 herb willow association (of Salix herbacea), are the highest 

 alpine and best studied meadow communities. The latter are 

 also well distributed in Scandinavia. 



16. Altherbosa: Tall herbage. — Tall-growing herbs dominate in 

 this. It is an exacting vegetation, greedy for humous, nutrient- 

 rich soil, and it occurs where forest and scrub for one reason or 

 another are absent. The Adenostylion or "Karflur" in the sub- 

 alpine belt of the Alps is developed in an Adenostyletum alliariae, 

 a Peucedanetum ostruthii, a Chaerophylletum villarsii. Mam- 

 moth tall herbage, as much as four meters high, occurs in the 

 Caucasus under the lead of Heracleum mategazzianum. In the 

 Arctic, Angelica archangelica dominates, man-high in well- 

 sheltered dales in Greenland. The "lair herbagej' Rumicion 

 alpini, around the alpine dairy huts on the overmanured soil 

 shows as dominant the big Rumex alpinus or Senecio alpinus, 

 or, in the Caucasus, Tele\ia speciosa. A successional stage of tall 

 herbage after wood-felling or forest fire is dominated by Epi- 

 lobium angusti folium, called ''willow herb" or "willow rose" in 

 Europe, charming with its red spikelets in the little wood open- 

 ings, but detestable as "fireweed" over wide American lands 

 where lumber companies have devastated the country by their 

 logging operations. 



