2 C. A. M. Lindman. 
woods just mentioned, where it belongs to the shade ground 
vegetation. 
A well-known example of the same kind is the suppressing 
effect which the beech ( Fagus silvatica ) and the spruce ( Picea ), 
both of which constitute very dark forests, exercise on the oak. In 
Germany and in South Sweden the oak, Quercus robur, eventually 
yields to the beech ; and in Central Sweden ( e.g . at Stockholm) 
isolated old and nearly ruined oaks are met with in the pure spruce 
woods, where, for want of daylight, no oak seedlings are nowadays 
seen. 
There is, however, another European forest-tree, the shade of 
which is still more intense than that of the beech. This is the yew 
(Taxus ), of which the largest and purest wood in the British Isles, 
the famous wood of Kingley Vale (Sussex), was shown to the foreign 
members of the International Excursion, and caused their enthu¬ 
siastic admiration. In this yew wood the ground was to a great 
extent entirely bare, 1 without any vegetation, phasnogamous or 
cryptogamic, consisting only of a dark brown earth, and never 
reached by any sun glimpse. There is evidently in the British 
flora no species able to settle and form a ground vegetation in 
darkness like this. In the tropics, e.g., South Brazil, the darkest 
woods and groves never lack a dense ground vegetation of miniature 
trees, ferns, and a few herbs. 2 
Plate I, Fig. 1 shows two individuals of Taxus at the margin of 
the large yew wood at Kingley Vale; one of these (to the left) is 
seen behind a large juniper, in the faint shade of which the yew 
has germinated. Later on, the juniper will be hidden, suffocated 
and killed by its neighbour, as has already happened with the 
junipers beneath the larger yew to the right. There is hardly a 
stronger contrast in British nature, in regard to the available light, 
than that between the black interior of the pure, dense yew wood 
and the complete exposure on the bright southern slope of a chalk 
down. 
II. 
I shall now call attention to a herbaceous plant, which, even 
when present as isolated individuals, is able to suppress its nearest 
neighbours by the shade of its leaves, together with the direct 
contact and pressure. This is Hypocliceris maculata. In Great 
Britain it is recorded from the chalk and limestone ; on similar 
habitats in Sweden it generally occurs in a dwarf form with small 
1 See also A. G. Tansley, “Types of British Vegetation,’’ p. 170. 
1 1 have endeavoured to sketch this in the book, “ Vegetation in Rio 
Grande do Sul,” 1900, pp. 130, 163. 
