Abstract
The Braun-Blanquet school today looks on characteristic species as useful labels or identification aids for associations already determined on the basis of the complete complement of species regularly recurring in different stands and with an eye also to the ecological factors. In this light many of the arguments against the system lose their force. Data from the blanket bogs of the Wicklow Mountains, Ireland, are more satisfactorily ordered by the Braun-Blanquet methods than by those of Poore. These data are used to demonstrate the delimiting of an association.