Schimper's 'Pflanzengeographie Auf Physiologisher Grundlage'
The German ecologist A.F.W. Schimper published ”Pflanzengeographie auf physiologisher Grundlage” in 1898 (in English 1903 as Plant-geography upon a physiological basis translated by W.R. Fischer, Oxford: Clarendon press, 839 pp.). Some authors have contended that part of the book was a case of plagiarism with heavy unacknowledged borrowing from Plantesamfund.
"This work not only covered much of the same ground as Warming did in 1895 and 1896 but in fact also leaned heavily on Warming’s research. Schimper (1898) quoted extensively from more than fifteen of Warming’s works and even reproduced Warming’s figures. Yet nowhere did Schimper acknowledge his profound debt to Warming, neither in the list of picture credits, nor in the acknowledgements section of the Vorwort, nor in his list of major sources, and not even in a footnote! ... Although replete with Warming’s data, it contains few ideas and did not advance ecology beyond what Warming had done earlier.”
Schimper's book is organized in three parts, (1) The factors, (2) Formations and mutualisms, and (3) Zones and regions. The third part is by far the largest (more than 3/4). It contains subsections on the Tropics, the Temperate zone, The Arctic, the Alpine regions and the Aquatic environments. This section is organized in a rather traditional way (leaning on de Candolle and others), but is full of Schimper's original observations from his travels throughout the World. The first part is organized in chapters about water, temperature, light, air, soil and animals, i.e. following the overall organization of Plantesamfund. The second part has chapters on plant communities under particular environmental control and about lianas, epiphytes and parasites. Schimper lists the literature used after each chapter and, for the chapters in the first two parts, Warming’s Lehrbuch der ökologischen Pflanzengeographie (Plantesamfund in the 1896 German translation) is included in every case. Yet, despite leaning heavily on this work with regard to both structure, content and illustrations of parts one and two, Schimper does not include Warming in his acknowledgements in the foreword (43 named individuals are thanked) nor does he include Plantesamfund in the short list of highly recommended readings at the end of the foreword (de Candolle’s Géographie botanique raisonnée (1855), Grisebach’s Die Vegetation der Erde (1872), Drude’s Handbuch der Pflanzengeographie (1890) and Atlas der Pflanzenverbreitung (1887) and Engler’s Versuch einen Entwicklungsgeschickte der Pflanzenwelt (1879-1882)). Taken together it clearly gives the impression that Schimper has been suspiciously economic with acknowledgements of his great intellectual debts to Warming.
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