Thistle Y. Harris

Thistle Y. Harris

Wild Flowers of Australia AN INDISPENSABLE DESCRIPTIVE GUIDE TO AUSTRALIAN WILD FLOWERS

Completely revised and updated Like its animal life, Australia's flora is distinctive and unique.

This is nowhere more apparent than in the tremendous diversity and beauty of the country's wild flowers.

As well as delicacy and beauty, sheer adaptive ingeniousness contributes to the particular appeal of these plants. Early in the development of the planet's flora, modifications and changes of evolutionary direction were occurring on this continent very different from those elsewhere in the world.

While equatorial and rainforest plants do exist which have developed in a relatively linear fashion from that general flora prevailing before the great continental separations, in general Australian wild flowers are characterized by their responses, in isolation from the rest of the world, to the demands of unusual, progressively harsher environmental conditions.

It was millions of generations of this isolated creative adaptation to unreliable climate and poor soils which has produced such masterpieces of hardiness and beauty as Sturt's Desert Pea, Needlebush, the Snow Daisy, Varnish Wattle and so on.

Over 250 Australian wild flowers are portrayed in this book.

They have been chosen to encompass, as far as possible, the wild flowers most likely to be found in each state, though many of the rarer types are also included.

Wherever possible common names for the plants have been used.

An important part of the value of Wild Flowers of Australia is that played by the magnificent colour illustrations of the late Adam Forster, widely recognized as one of the most accomplished of Australian wild flower artists.

The book is divided into two parts : Part contains non-technical descriptions alongside Forster's colour illustrations of each plant. Part 2 contains more technical and specialist descriptions, with botanical keys to assist identifications and enable reference back to the colour plates.