Szekessy Vilmos (szerk.): A Magyar Természettudományi Múzeum évkönyve 62. (Budapest 1970)

Fekete, G. ; Szujkó-Lacza, J.: A survey of the plant life-form systems and the respective research approaches, II.

Regulation is in all cases created by the given conditions of the environment, and the totality of adaptations during the active phase of the plant denotes, in the view of the above authors, the extremely expanded concept of life-form which, for these very causes, is probably best to distinguish by their term ecobiomorph. GOLUBEV (1968) investigates life-forms also from a phytocoenological standpoint. The investigation of life-forms is important, he says, because they determine the interaction, structure, and dynamics of the components consituting the coenosis. Both of the two concepts (the stricter ecologico-morphological and the wider morphologico-physiological ones)—evolved in the course of researches concerning the life-forms—are important in the investigation of the latter. He contends further that the great majority of the life-form systems heretofore established had been constructed in agreement with a leading concept. He considers them the artificial groupings of the species in which many other features, important from a coenological point of view, of the plants remain disregarded. Not even the morphological life-form systems present all—eventually essential—morphological traits of the species, and still less the ecophysiological characters. GOLTJBEV argues that life-form investigations of an ecological outlook, especially SENNIKOV'S works, lead to the realization that, owing to its ecological and morphological individuality, the plant itself is the life-form. On account of their very individuality there is no two plant species which would, by their morphology and ecology, play the same role in the community. The minute biological differences, disregarded in the several life-form systems, prove decisive within the coenosis, in the fight against one another. As an inescapable inference, he states that as there is no other life-form than that of the given species so no other true plant system than the phylogenetical one exists. Accordingly, there is no perspective, in his contention, in the construction of any kind of a life-form system. Instead of constructing life-form systems, GOLUBEV urges, for a better understanding of the coenological role of the species, the elaboration of a system of the essential biologico-ecological features. The species ought to be characterized by fundamental biological and ecological characteristics. To facilitate work, he recommends a punch-card coding system, allowing the universal quantitative ecologico-biological comparison of the associations. Though he considers both biomorphological and ecophysiological traits equally important, he elaborates in his work the biomorphological characteristics of the life-forms of merely the angiosperms. Besides the generally biological and geobotanical characteristics, GOLUBEV accentuates 30 biomorphologic characteristics of co-ordinate significance. They are: the rate of lignification, the form of growth, the height and duration of the plant, the type of the shoot structure, the means of increase and regeneration of the shoots, the intensity of branching of the shoots, the cyclicism of the development of the monocarpous shoots, the size and consistency of the leaves, the number of leaf and shoot generations per year, the vegetational period of the plant, the adaptation of the leaves to the unfavourable period, the type of the renovating buds, the grade of development of next year shoots in the renovating buds, the height of the renovating buds, the type of bud protection, the rhythm and duration of flowering, the means of pollination, the repetition and rhythm of fructification, the means of dispersal of the fruits and seeds, the forms of the vegetative organs of proliferation, the character and depth of the subterranean shoots, the annual growth and number of generations of the root-stocks and stolos, the type of the root-system, the modifications of the roots, the depth of penetration of the roots, the horizontal