The aim of the article: to analyze the periods during which the understanding of the processes of negative and positive mutual influence of plants was formed from antiquity to the first half of the 20th century.

Ancient ideas about the mutual influence of plants in its various manifestations are considered: the positive and negative effect of crops on soil fertility, the impossibility of growing a monoculture, the influence of plants on each other through smells, etc. The period of the Middle Ages, during which plants were considered only for the purpose of treatment, is briefly traced. The initial stage of research on the mutual influence of plants in the process of struggle for existence from the end of the 18th century is considered. until the beginning of the 19th century, when scientific and pseudo-scientific theories were put forward through experimentation. The period of the end of the 19th century is analyzed – the first half of the 20th century, which is characterized by rapid development in the field of natural sciences and especially botany. The accumulated empirical material required research where plants were studied together with problems closely related to solving practical tasks of agriculture: soil fatigue, research on the process of using hard-to-dissolve nutrients, etc. On the basis of the experimental results of many outstanding scientists, the foundations of one of the problems of plant physiology – allelopathy or chemical interaction of plants, which later became an independent science, were born.

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