Ordination, Classification and Vegetational Boundaries

Zusammenfassung

In recent years there has been a considerable controversy over the relative merits of classification and.ordination in the study of vegetation.Classification implies the division of the individuals or units being classified into categories or classes, whose members show a greater or less degree of similarity a-mongst themselves, and differ from members of other categories. Ordination (whose development is associated particularly with the name of J.T. CURTIS and his school in Wisconsin) treats the vegetation being studied as a continuum, and seeks to arrange the stands so that their spatial relation to one or more axes will display as much information as possible about their relationships. This controversy has become associated with, and to a large extent heir to, an older controversy — that between those who (like CLEMENTS) held a pseudo-organismal concept of the plant community, and those who (like GLEASON) held that a plant community is a fortuitous aggregation of plants separately dependent on the factors of the environment.