Ecology is the practice of a globally relevant archeology, ethnohistory, ethnography and related disciplines. While geographic information systems can give practical integration of spatial structures (habitations, soils, river drainage), practical understanding of past and current relationships among these environmental and human systems require a culturally specific temporal and spatial perspective applied at a regional scale. Plant geography as a subject in its own right is relatively modern. It is true that records of plant ranges, as then known, are given by many early authors but they are usually incidental to other studies. Ecology is concerned with the relationship between plants and their surroundings and with the grouping of plants into kinds of vegetation. On the whole, plant ecology is intensive while plant geography is extensive in outlook, but both are concerned with plants and, in attempting to correlate observed structure and behaviour with "causes," both refer to the same sum total of environmental factors though the emphasis varies. The purpose of this book is to consolidate all this information and present it in a simple way for the benefit of the students, as well as teachers and researchers.
