The text is a presentation given on the occasion of the yearly meeting of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters on April 10th 1922. It presents the development of the plant topographic research in Finland with the most influential research and authors and their principal work.
The retrospect covers the publications between 1673 and 1917The article presents definitions for central concepts that are commonly used in the research of plant topography. The discipline has close connections to defining and classifying forest types.
The concepts defined involve concrete and abstract concepts linked to vegetation conditions and to habitat.