2001/01/01 by Patrick Matagne · 1 voice
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Social Sciences · #African Botany and Ecology Studies #Historical and Literary Studies #Mediterranean and Iberian flora and fauna
paper · doi:10.3406/rhs.2001.2136
openalex publication_date 2001/01/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
SUMMARY. — At the end of the 1880s, Charles Flahault called on the botanists of the Mediterranean region in an effort to introduce new programs of investigation in botanical geography, that required determining the limits of the areas of plants distribution. For the great phytogeographer of Montpellier, the administrative limits that defined the scope of most of the local studies of the past century were unsuited to account for the causes of the geographic dispersion of species. But the botanical traditions were rich and well established in the Mediterranean region. Flahault was thus confronted with deeply-rooted practices and with a school already solidly structured around the founding concepts of botanical geography. In addition, he appeared on the scene when the debate on the concept of natural home began to grow acrimonious. It is in this context that the Mediterranean region became the model from which schools of ecology developed.