Plant Community

June 3, 2011 at 1:39 pm Leave a comment

“Plant Community,” in Schwarz, A.E. & K. Jax (Eds.), Ecology Revisited, (Berlin: Springer, 2011), 325-331.

The Danish botanist Warming coined the plant community concept in his book “Plantesamfund” in 1895. It has a neo-Lamarckian, morphological, and religiously informed understanding of plant geography. The community concept also drew its inspiration from the Danish political and social environment. Warming was a patriotic defender of the King’s council’s ambition to expand the Danish Empire and the exploitation of natural resources. The plant community concept provided a tool for management of nature that was inspired by the King’s steering of human communities. Warming’s morphologically informed research in Brazil and his geographical explorations of Greenland were also of key importance in the development of his plant community concept.