broad transition between two allied habitat types, or it may simply be incorporated into the plant 

 association name as a further descriptor or name serving to distinguish between similar types. 



It should be noted that Daubenmire's concept of plant association differs from that recognized by 

 the International Botanical Congress in that it refers only to late-seral or climax conditions rather 

 than existing vegetation. An association is comprised of all climax stands in which the 

 dominants of corresponding layers are essentially the same, to the extent that any differences in 

 composition are due to chance dissemination or to a transitory historic factor, rather than to a 

 fundamental dissimilarity in habitat potentialities. The plant association is a subjective concept 

 based on those characters at least potentially common to all the separate stands which represent 

 it, and which serve to distinguish the grouping from all other stands. It is abstract in that not all 

 stands comprising it can be studied and we therefore assume that the range and mean 

 characteristics of the inventoried stands represent the entire group. Note that no two stands 

 grouped into one association are ever identical and that soil, macro- and microclimate, and the 

 zoological component may differ from stand to stand, but that their sums produce vegetation 

 groupings with a high degree of similarity. 



A problem in classification is posed by all vegetation stages preceding the climax condition. The 

 vast majority of land area included in any one h.t. is recovering from disturbance and thus 

 occupied by serai plant communities which vary due to floristic and recruiting accident 

 (stochastic element), as well as stages of development. In forest/woodland vegetation, where the 

 course of succession is protracted, it is possible to define intermedial and relatively 

 homogeneous stages called "associes" or more commonly known as community types. 

 "Community t}'pe" refers to serai vegetation stages or when the serai status of a stand or 

 assemblage of like stands is in question. 



There can be a many serai community types resulting from the disturbance of a single plant 

 association. The great strength of classifications reflecting Daubemiiire's approach is that they 

 emphasize the fact that intrinsic characteristics of soil and macroclimate remain essentially 

 unaltered during the successive cycles of destruction and regeneration of climaxes. If one 

 accords temporary and climax communities equal weight, then one cannot establish with any 

 degree of precision the relationship between communities and climate and soils. It follows 

 therefore that immature units are most effectively related in classifications to the mature forms 

 they represent. A telling advantage of centering classification on the most stable t>'pes that can 

 be found is that it aggregates different successional communities represented by a virtually 

 infinite variety of subtly intergrading stages that all lead to a highly reduced number of stable 

 t}'pes. This results in a far more simplified classification than would be the product if all 

 temporal variants of vegetation are treated as equally significant. This is not to say that tracking 

 serai variants is not important, but it expands the scope of work . 



Tluee common misconceptions arising from the use of plant association names, sensu 

 Daubenniire, are that: (1) an abundance of climax vegetation is present in the cun-ent landscape, 

 (2) we should manage the resource to promote climax vegetation, (3) to apply this classification 

 system requires climax vegetation. The opposite is true in the first two instances: (1) a very high 

 percentage of our forested landscape and a high, but unknown portion of non-forest land reflects 

 some degree of disturbance, resulting in a preponderance of serai stages, (2) in forests and some 



