Generic plant assemblages in the highland forests of Papua New Guinea

Virtually complete tree lists from seventy‐eight sites in four regions above 1900 in a.s.l. in Papua New Guinea are analysed numerically and the results compared with classifications already in use. A major floristic break occurs between 2800 m and 3000 w a.s.l. The Upper Mountain Forest above this is tentatively divided into four nodes, the altitudinally lowest (< 3400 m) being pliysiognomically similar to the forest below. The Lower Mountain Forest below the major break has two nodes, one of which may be an assemblage of variously depauperate and less stable derivatives of the other: they are not altitudinally distinct.