Abstract
THIS book, as the author himself states, "is devoted to plant geography in the narrower sense", plant ecology being outside its scope. As a consequence, the treatment is essentially factual in character rather than causal, and static rather than dynamic. The difficulties of any attempt at such restriction are at once apparent, despite the inclusion of chapters on geological history and plant distribution and a section devoted to the factors of distribution. However, within these limits the author has collected together many of the facts concerning the distribution of taxonomic aggregates over the earth‘s surface which will be a welcome addition to the botanist‘s library, the more so that much of the literature of the subject is widely scattered. More than a third of the text is devoted to salient facts of the distribution of families, genera and species, where many of the striking features of extended range, discontinuity and endemism are assembled and illustrated with more than forty maps portraying various types of occurrence, from the extended tropical range of the Palmae and the cosmopolitan genus Drosero, to the discontinuity of the Magnoliacese or that of Saxifraga geum and Dabœcia polifolium.
The Geography of the Flowering Plants
By Prof. Ronald Good. Pp. 403 + 25 plates. (London, New York and Toronto: Longmans, Green and Co., Ltd., 1947.) 30s. net.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
SALISBURY, E. The Geography of the Flowering Plants. Nature 161, 704 (1948). https://doi.org/10.1038/161704a0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/161704a0