Abstract
As is widely recognised, fossil florules are difficult to correlate because they appear to have been more controlled by environmental and ecological factors than uniform changes which reflect the passage of geological time. Here I present a worked example of a generally applicable approach to this problem in dating and mapping fossil plant associations. Floral associations are best described and named by the classical methods of phytosociology. The three dimensional shape of an association in rocks and its palaeoecology can then be critically assessed. For example, during Middle Triassic time the following plant associations would have been encountered on a traverse from the coast to several hundred kilometres inland from the Pacific margin of Gondwanaland: Pachydermophylletum (mangrove scrub), Linguifolietum (coastal swamp woodland), Dicroidietum odontopteroidium (floodplain forest), Phoenicopsetum (levee bank scrub), Dicroidietum odontopteroidium xylopterosum (xerophytic woodland) and Johnstonietum (mal...
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