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.
ANNALES HISTORICO-NATURALES MUSEI NATIONALIS HUNGARICI Tomus 62. PARS BOTANICA 1970. A Survey of the Plant Life-form Systems and the Respective Research Approaches, II. By G. FEKETE and JULIA SZUJKÓ-LACZA, Budapest The Russian-Soviet Ecological and Coenological Life-form Researches In our preceding paper*, we have discussed the evolvement of the concept life-form, and its occasionally different interpretations. We have treated the morphological and ecological principles which the several authors considered essential in the definition of the life-forms. We have also cited the aims set for the classification of life-forms. Life-forms had been successfully applied for the description of the vegetational formations, and we may safely state that this object persisted almost to our very days. According to a number of authors, the vegetation of especially the tropics, extremely rich in species but systematically still incompletely exposed, can best be characterized by life-forms (ADAMSON, 1939, and the cited references). By this, one should primarily understand RAUNKIAER'S lifeform system, or some of its amplified varieties. In addition, the Central European BRAUN-BLANQUET coenological school and its followers apply RAUNKIAER'S lifeforms for the analysis of the associations — as will be seen in our next paper. That also other views came into being beside RAUNKIAER'S life-form concept is attested, for instance, by GAMS'S work (1918) already cited in our previous paper. On the basis of an approach rather diverging from the earlier ones GAMS describes biological types in the origin of which physiological factors are considered the most important. An essential development of this concept appears in SENNIKOV'S several books. Thus, for instance in 1950, SENNIKOV contends in his critique of RAUNKIAER'S system that the height of the shoots is not a primary adaptation to an unfavourable season. More important is the meagre water content in the tissues of the shoots, assuring the protection against frost; shoot-height and structure play here a merely secondary role. Also concurrently with RAUNKIAER'S system and within the general field of the application of his life-form concept, trends divergent to a certain degree appeared in English and German literature. They can be commonly characterized by desisting from attempts to describe mainly the great formations. They are based namely on features insufficient for a complete description of the formation—and these are the structure and form of the shoots —but still better adapted for the investigation of finer differences within a given association than RAUNKIAER'S life-forms. The description on the basis of life-forms and external habit features of the plant formations of the Earth, as well as the examination of the distribution or zones of these formations, had largely terminated by the end of the 'twenties or * cf. J. SZUJKÓ-LACZA & G. FEKETE, (1969).
