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Vegetation of coastal Bohuslan 113Fig. l. The main components of the coastal landscape in North· and Central Bohuslan are granite tablehills, dissected bydeep, partly sediment-filled fissure valleys in a more or less rhomboidal pattern. Off-shore, and further south, the lattercomponent is largely under sea-level. WooQ.s are confined to the narrow fringes of coarse soils at the foot of the hillsides.Scale approx. 1: 10,000. Published with due permission of the Defence Board. See further M. FRIES 1951 and 1958b.to be at least partly influenced by its proximityto the coast (Du RIETZ 1925e)·. The vegetation inthe bare skerry and deciduous wood regions growsnear to the sea, which affects their environment invarious ways. The demarcation between the tworegions is obscured to some extent by cultivation.The types of vegetation in these regions are verycharacteristic of Bohuslan, and they form the mainsubject of the present paper.The bare skerry and deciduous wood regions arebroadest in the south of Bohuslan, becoming narrowertowards the north. In the far north of Bohuslan,the pine-forest reaches as far as the sea. Thus,regional borders run, broadly speaking, from thesouth-east to the north-west.As previously emphasized, the bare skerry anddeciduous wood regions largely consist of woodlessrocky ground forming cliffs and plateaux. Theintensive · utilization of the forest in old timesresulted in widespread barelaying of large areaseven in the ·deciduous wood region. Often the onlyvegetation of these rock areas consists of mossesand lichens. Fissures, hollows, and small valleyscontain rock-pools which partly have developedinto peat-forming vegetation, in addition to heatherand grass heaths, and brushwood. The large fissurevalleys in the deciduous wood region are used asarable and pasture land, which is often enclosedby narrow edgings of scrub or trees. In the bareskerry region the sediment in the valleys is moreActa Phytogeog.r. Suec. 50