The Botany of Iceland - 01.12.1914, Page 133

V. A SKETCH OF THE CHIEF PLANT-FORMATIONS
OF ICELAND.
We will now give a brief account of the commonest and, from
a geographical point of view, most important plant-formations
ol' the land-vegetation of Iceland, without, however, entering into
details or into local deviations of the different plant-associations.
This account is based partly on my own observations and partly
on those published by others; I have especially made use of Dr.
Helgi Jónsson’s numerous excellent descriptions of the vegeta-
tion-forms of Iceland. Here I shall confine myself to the pureljr
geographical distribution without entering more closely into rela-
tions of causation, or into questions ol’ general ecologv, which will
no doubt be exhaustively discussed later on. The division into
plant-formations and -associations is as yet, in many respects, de-
pendent upon individual opinion. In the following, with the ex-
ception of a few deviations, I am adopting Dr. H. Jónsson’s main
divisions. Dr. Jónsson is the most experieqced investigator of the
vegetation of Iceland, and has described the plant-life from many
more parts of Iceland than has anyone else. But much work re-
mains to be done by future investigators; the vegetation-conditions
from more than one-lialf the total area of the island are still to be
described. and so many local variations, and such varied associa-
tions occur withi'n the larger formations that it will be a long time
hefore the details from everywhere are well-known. The following
is only a brief account íor the general orientation of the larger
plant-formations and of the chief points regarding the distribution
of the higher plants according to present knowledge1.
1 Besides the above-mentioned works on the flora of Iceland, tliere are the
following descriptions of the vegetation: — Chr. Grönlund: Karakteristik of
Wantevæxten paa Island, sammenlignet med I'loraen i flere andre Lande (Natur-
historisk Forenings Festskrift, 1890 [printed 1884], pp. 107—145). C. H. Ostenfeld:
Skildringer af Vegetationen paa Island (Botanisk Tidsskrift, XXII, 1899, pp. 227—
21*