The appearance of this fifth volume of British Plant Communities brings to a close the publication of the National Vegetation Classification and, as Coordinator of the project, it is my privilege to put on record the gratitude of the whole research team and my own personal thanks to all who have been instrumental in the completion of the work.

For this volume, we were extremely fortunate in having access from the outset to the data which Dr Paul Adam had energetically assembled for his postgraduate research at Cambridge University into British saltmarsh vegetation. Extensive in its coverage and already developed into a classification scheme with highly informative vegetation descriptions, this work obviated the need for any further detailed survey on our part and more than laid a foundation for our own scheme. Such additional data as we did collect to fill any gaps was also supplemented by local surveys by Dr Pat Doody and Margaret Hill of the then NCC, Dr Malcolm Carter and Dr Judith Roper-Lindsay. In integrating this into the NVC framework and reviewing the progress of our synthesis Paul Adam continued to give of his time and expertise without demur.

For sea-cliffs we were equally blessed in inheriting large quantities of data from Andrew Malloch whose geographical and floristic coverage of this difficult and neglected habitat was adventurously wide and whose knowledge of the plant communities and their environmental relationships was second to none.