168
THE CAUSES OF
DIFFERENCES
AMONG PLANTS
CLIMATE AND VEGETATION
T
hat different plants grow
in different climates was
likely common knowledge
for as long as agriculture has
existed; many cultures have
traded plants for thousands of years.
However, the clear link between a
region’s dominant vegetation type
and climate was not categorically
spelled out until German botanist
Andreas Schimper published his
ideas on plant geography in 1898.
Botanists such as Carl Linnaeus
and Alexander von Humboldt had
written about plant distributions in
the 18th and early 19th centuries.
The widely traveled Humboldt
understood that climate was one
of the key factors governing where
plants did and did not grow.
Schimper went one step further
than Humboldt by explaining
that similar vegetation types arise
under similar climatic conditions
in different parts of the world.
He then produced a global
classification of vegetation zones
that reflected this observation.
Schimper’s 1898 book Plant-
geography upon a Physiological
Basis ran to 870 pages and is one
of the largest ecology monographs
written by a single author. A
synthesis of plant geography andplant physiology (the functioning of
plants), it became the foundation of
the study of plant ecology. Schimper
explained that the connection
between the structures of plants
and the external conditions they
faced in different places was the
key to what he described as
“ecological plant-geography.”
Vegetation was divided into broad
tropical, temperate, arctic,
mountain, and aquatic zones, then
subdivided further, according to“Flowering stones” (Lithops) are
native to southern Africa, their thick,
fleshy leaves well suited to dry, rocky
conditions. Related species also occur
in similar arid habitats in the US.IN CONTEXT
KEY FIGURE
Andreas Schimper
(1856–1901)BEFORE
1737 Carl Linnaeus’s Flora
Lapponica includes details of
the geographical distribution
of Lapland plants.1807 Alexander von Humboldt
publishes his seminal Essay
on the Geography of Plants.AFTER
1916 In Plant Succession:
an Analysis of the
Development of Vegetation,
Frederic Clements describes
how communities of species
are indicators of the climate
in which they have matured.1968 “The Role of Climate
in the Distribution of
Vegetation,” by American
geographers John Mather
and Gary Yoshioka, explains
how temperature and rainfall
alone are not enough to define
plant distributions.US_168-169_Climate_Vegetation.indd 168 12/11/18 6:25 PM