1. In three areas of vegetation (dune, mountain heath and salt marsh) the following phytosociological techniques have been tested and compared, using the same data: the Braun-Blanquet method; association and inverse analysis ofWilliams &Lambert; cluster analysis (agglomerative classification) based on different coefficients of similarity; and ordination (principal components analysis performed on matrices of different coefficients).

Auf drei verschiedenen Vegetationsflächen (Bergheide, Küstendünen und Salzwiesen) sind die folgenden pflanzensoziologischen Methoden geprüft und verglichen worden: die Methode von Braun-Blanquet; “association analysis” vonWilliams &Lambert (1959, 1961); Ordination (“principal components analysis”); und “cluster analysis” (Sokal &Sneath, 1963).

2. The classical syntaxonomical treatment of the European Spartina communities as published in the series Prodrome of the the European plant communities, is compared with the results of a numerical treatment, based on largely the same set of relevés. 576 relevés, selected from the total salt marsh data set were subjected to agglomerative clustering with relocation with the similarity ratio as similarity measure.

576 Aufnahmen, aus dem gesammten Salzwiesenmaterial entnommen, wurden mit einem agglomerativen Schwarm-Verfahren auf Basis der similarity ratio bearbeitet.