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Published on 01 June 2004
The Prodrome of the Vegetations of France represents the first development of a classifica-tion of the vegetation communities for metro-politan France. It includes all phytosociological units up to the row of suballiance. For practical reasons, the units are presented in alphabetical order. The work encompasses 712 syntaxa of higher rank (classes to sub-alliances) distribu-ted as follows: 76 classes, 141 orders, 7 suborders, 361 alliances and 127 suballiances. It provides an abundant synonymy, gathering 2124 names of syntaxa, for which the choice of names is made clear and justified with respect to the rules of international phytosociological nomenclature. This book includes a bibliography of the publications concerning the syntaxon names, an index of author names, the abbreviations used and the names of syntaxa.