l] WHAT IS PLANT GEOGRAPHY ? I5 



here, except in so far as it may help us to understand our own 

 problems.^ 



The Animal Side 



As animals are so largely dependent upon plants for food, shelter, 

 and other requisites of life, their geography and ecology tend to 

 be less fundamental than those of plants, or at all events less closely 

 related to the physical environment. Nevertheless the animal side 

 of the picture of life (and in particular, Man's influence) must be 

 vividly borne in mind by students of plant geography. Thus we 

 shall see in Chapter IV how numerous plants depend upon animals, 

 in many and various ways, for the dispersal of their seeds and 

 fruits. Later on, in the chapters on vegetation-types, we shall be 

 repeatedly reminded of how animals modify vegetation during their 

 feeding and other activities, often favouring the growth, or very 

 existence, of one species while discouraging that of another, and 

 profoundly affecting the vegetation locally. In these and other ways, 

 Man is apt to have the greatest influence of all. Many plants, 

 too, depend on animals for pollination and hence fertilization of 

 their flowers ; here, at least in the absence of vegetative means of 

 propagation, reproduction will not normally take place without 

 animal aid. All of these features can, and frequently do, affect 

 the spreading and ultimate distribution of plant species. It is 

 therefore not surprising that many areas, such as Australia and 

 South Africa, have both a floristic and faunistic character and 

 identity of their own, their (often peculiar) plants and animals going 

 hand in hand, so to speak. Furthermore, animal geography often 

 corroborates the conclusions of plant geography, and offers splendid 

 evidence of evolutionary trends in its fossil record. It also appears 

 to corroborate migrational tendencies in its suggestion of certain 

 ' land-bridges ' and ' refuges '. 



In view of the closeness with which the two are linked in nature, 

 there is much to be said for the study, which has increased in 

 popularity in recent decades, of plants and animals as they exist 

 together in joint ' biotic ' communities. But whereas the particular 

 physical conditions in an area are more or less vividly expressed in 

 the local plant cover, which forms, as it were, a living framework, 



' Interested readers are referred to the standard work on the subject by Dr. J 

 Braun-Blanquet {Plant Sociology, McGraw-Hill, New York &^ London, pp. 

 xviii + 439, 1932), or the second German edition {Pflaiizemosiologie : Gnmdziige 

 der Vegetationsktwde, Springer, Wien, pp. xi + 631, 1951)- 



