Plant Ecology in Switzerland

Abstract

IT is appropriate that the trend of botanical in vestigation in Switzerland, a mountainous country with considerable areas of natural vegetation, should be largely in the direction of plant ecology. A nourishing school of plant sociology (to use their own term) has arisen, inspired to a great extent by the veteran Carl Schroter. The latest of the series of vegetation monographs already published by members of this school is one on the Grimsel region, by Dr. E. Frey, of Bern. About half the entire surface of this region, which lies on the eastern slopes of the Finsteraarhorn massif, is either sparsely vegetated or else consists of bare detritus or rock. Moreover, in some cases the glaciers are steadily retreating, thus exposing a virgin surface for colonisation by plants. The comparatively unstable state of the vegetation resulting from these conditions naturally led the author to regard the vegetation primarily from the “genetic-dynamic “point of view. Hence nearly half the monograph deals with the colonisation of, and plant succession in, the various rock, detrital, and alluvial habitats. It is in this part of the work that the chief interest lies.