中國木本植物區域之分布

The distribution of woody plants of China

In the preceding issue of TAIWANIA I discussed the distribution of woody plants in China (Lee 20). In this paper I wish to consider the factors affecting the distribution of the woody plants. Botanists, plant geographers and many foresters have divided the natural vegetation types of China into from 5 to 18 or even as many as 26 different types and regions. This discrepancy in the classification is dependent upon the different bases that the various authors have ased. C. K. Merriam classified the distribution of vegetation by simply basing it upon the temperature as the controlling factor and neglecting the moisture, soils and other factors. W. Koeppen has, in addition to temperature, stressed the importance of such edaphic factors as, moisture and soils. The former method is more simple; the latter is more complex. When other edaphic factors are considered this results in producing more kinds of vegetational types.