The sampling and analysis of the vegetation

Sand dunes occur widely around the British coast and, from the beginnings of plant ecology in this country, attracted sufficient attention for Tansley (1939) to be able to outline some of the major vegetation types encountered there and to sketch out a successional line that remains a commonly invoked example of serai development.

Necessarily, perhaps, the understanding of pattern and process in this distinctive landscape was dominated in these early years by studies of a few particular sites like Braunton Burrows on the Somerset coast, the Southport dunes and north Norfolk (e.g. Oliver 1913; Watson 1918; Salisbury 1922, 1925; Pearsall 1934). With the vegetation of coastal shingle which figured from the start in these enquiries, it was again striking sites like Blakeney and Chesil Beach which received attention (Oliver 1911, 1913; Watson 1922; Richards 1929). Further painstaking investigation of some of these and a very few other sites, like Newborough Warren on Anglesey, has yielded an informative understanding of the ecology of important aspects of the dune habitat (e.g. Ranwell 1959, 1960a, b; Willis et al. 1959a, b; Willis & Yemm 1961) but without any wider descriptive framework of dunes throughout Britain in which to contextualise the picture of vegetation types emerging. More broadly, Scottish sand dunes figured little in our view of these communities until Gimingham's (1964a) overview.