TRANSACTIONS OF WAGNER 
VEGETATION OF SOUTH FLORIDA 
62 
and associations than can the systematist,* because he has been trained to 
working with vegetation units rather than with species and the habitats of 
species. The systematist usually emphasizes the peculiarities of land 
surface classified by the geographer, but the plant geographer and ecologist 
must insist on a classification based on the succession of vegetation; how 
the formations and associations are related to each other, and what their 
derivation has been from formations and associations that have preceded. 
The characterization of any plant formation and association does not 
depend upon the enumeration of all the species that enter into association, 
as some systematists of rather narrow view would have us believe, but 
upon the forms which are dominant, which control, or which give physiog- 
nomonic expression to the type of vegetation studied. It is possible to 
describe a formation, or an association, by the mention of only one or two 
species without a complete list of all the species that are found growing 
together. This is an important principle and should be emphasized by 
plant geographers. It might even happen that the ecologist might describe 
a formation by mentioning correctly the dominant growth forms and their 
growth habits, and yet he might, in the enumeration of the secondary 
species, make mistakes in the identification of some of the plants. His 
conclusions would not be vitiated by such mistakes, because he has ap- 
proached the study from the standpoint of the vegetation as a whole and 
not from the specific standpoint of the systematist. For example, the 
phytogeographer describes the character of a pine forest, the growth of the 
dominant pines, the formation of a crown and shade, the secondary species, 
their suppression in the forest, the herbaceous plants of the forest flora. 
His conclusions as to the character of the association of species may be 
perfectly correct scientifically and of great value, as giving a general view 
of the vegetation of a country, and yet, for the sake of argument, a number 
of his determinations may be open to question, Of course, accuracy in 
specific determinations is to be desired highly in all this kind of botanic 
investigation, but the point which it is desired to emphasize is that vegeta- 
tion can be described without mentioning specifically a single plant. 
An account will be given of the plant formations and associations, fol- 
lowed by a discussion of the probable derivation and successions of the 
various types of vegetation found at the southern end of the Florida pen- 
insula. 
* Of course, there are always exceptions. 
