Weber, WA 2003: The middle Asian element in the southern Rocky Mountain Flora of the western United States: a critical biogeographical review. - Journal of Biogeography30: 649-685. [RLL List # 191 / Rec.# 24415] Keywords: ALTAI/ ARCTO-TERTIARY FLORA/ BIOGEOGRAPHY/ GRAY, ASA/ HOOKER/ NUNATAK THEORY/ OROBOREAL/ REVIEW/ ROCKY MOUNTAINS
Abstract: 1 fig. ["Main conclusions (1) The modern alpine and associated marginal steppe and montane floras contain taxa of Tertiary age. (2) The floras of the southern mountains antedate those of the present-day Arctic. (3) The Middle Asiatic and the North American floras once enjoyed a contiguous existence over a broad area involving connections between North America and Asia across the North Pole by way of Greenland. Their present disjunctions are products of extinction and attrition of ranges, not of long-distance migration or dispersal mechanisms. (4) North-eastern North American disjunctions of so-called Cordilleran species (the Nunatak hypothesis) need not require explanations involviing long-distance dispersal or migration, but represent relictual populations of the once widely distributed Oroboreal flora."]