On the genesis of the plant population in the Alps: new or critical aspects.

The present work reconsiders the history of the vegetation of the alpine arc within a framework called the alpine Orosystem, comprising mid-latitude mountain ranges throughout Europe (mainly the Pyrenees, the Alps, the Carpathians and the northern Balkan mountains). The unity and originality of this whole is attested in its high supraspecific endemism and in the existence of a complex of distinctive grasslands within the alpine belt. Maximum differentiation of the flora must be placed forward during the Pliocene epoch. The system remained relatively isolated, to the extreme west of Eurasia, and remote contributions appear to have been overestimated.