Centre for Plant Biodiversity Research

Handbooks and Field Guides
(Geographical and Ecological)

(Less comprehensive than floras, and not always with keys, but often with many illustrations.)

Australia-wide

Baines, A. (An etymological dictionary of) Australian plant genera. Soc. for Growing Austral. Pl., Sydney, 1981. (406 pp.) [Not an identification guide in any sense, but gives short profiles of each genus, incl. pronunciation of the name, date genus was described, derivation of name, number of species, habitat, habit, uses, distribution, and further references. Now rather dated, but can be useful.]

Boland, D.J. et al. Forest Trees of Australia, 4th edn. Nelson/CSIRO, 1984. [Not comprehensive but very useful; descriptions and notes, line drawings and b/w plates.]

Cronin, L. Key guide to Australian trees. Reed, 1988. (191 pp.) [Covers 249 species, with a simple pictorial key, short descriptions and fair to very good quality colour paintings. Useful for non-eucalypt species.]

Elliot, G. Australian Plants identified - a home gardener's guide to the identification of over 1000 commonly grown Australian native plants. Hyland House, 1990. (231 pp.) [The subtitle says it all; useful for generic identification across a range of families. An introductory chapter on plant classification and parts is followed by a colour-photo guide to over 200 genera; then sections on the major families and genera, with easy-to-use keys to the commoner genera, and some detail to species level for the very commonly grown species only.]

South-eastern Australia (general)

Galbraith, J. (Field guide to the) wild flowers of south-east Australia. Collins, 1977 (450 pp.) [Very brief descriptions of a large range of native species from the temperate south-east, including SE Queensland and Tasmania. 48 pp. of colour photos show examples of many genera. Simple key system to family and genus level only. The "common" names given are often only a translation of the Latin name, and are not necessarily in common usage. Increasingly dated, but still popular.]

Rotherham, E.R. et al. (eds) Flowers & plants of New South Wales and southern Queensland. Reed, 1975. [Many colour plates of a limited selection of native species, organized by habitat.]

Sydney district

Benson, D. & L. McDougall Rare bushland plants of western Sydney. Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney, 1991. (60 pp.) [Short descriptions and conservation assessments of the declared rare species of the area, together with descriptions of the main plant communities, and a list of occurrences in the main suburban areas. Line illustrations and some colour photos.]

Robinson, L. (Field guide to the) Native plants of Sydney. Kangaroo Press, 1991. (448 pp.) [Impressive and user-friendly. The book is divided into dicots (major and minor families), monocots, primitives, and then "separate groups" such as climbers, mistletoes, rainforest species, aquatics. A simple illustrated key gets the user to one of these sections; there are no further keys. Each species is briefly described, and illustrated with a line drawing; these drawings are basic but often capture the look of the plant remarkably well. Authors and name-meanings are given.]

New South Wales (non-Sydney), including ACT

Cunningham, G.M. et al. Plants of Western New South Wales. Soil Conservation Service of NSW, 1981. [Very good guide with short descriptions and colour plates of most species; glossary; no keys. A little dated but still very useful.]

Edwards, A.H. Street trees in Canberra. Aust. Nat. Univ. Press, 1979. (c. 60 pp.) [Street by street guide to planted trees, with 24 pp. of colour illustrations.]

Fraser, I & M. McJannett Wildflowers of the bush capital. Vertigo Press 1993 (93 pp). [Very easy to use field guide with a watercolour of each plant described; includes only a limited number of plants of the Canberra area.]

Fuller, L. Wollongong's native trees. Privately publ. by author, Kiama?, 1980. [Useful info on trees of the area, with b/w photos and line illustrations, and detailed local distribution maps.]

Fuller, L. Native trees of central Illawarra (incl. the Kiama and Shellharbour municipalities). Weston & Co., 1985 (186 pp.) [Good local guide, illustrated, with maps.]

Pryor, L. & J.G.C. Banks Trees and shrubs in Canberra. Little Hills Press, 1991 (287 pp.) [Guide to native and exotic vegetation in Canberra, good colour illustrations. Includes information on notable and commemorative trees.]

McCann, I.R. The Alps in flower. Victorian Nat'l Parks Assocn, 1989. (62 pp.) [Guide to prominent native species, with colour illustrations. Common and scientific names are given, with a statement of habit, flowering season, and distribution within major national parks. Lacks good written descriptions.]

Weare, P. A collection of Australian wildflower illustrations. [cover title]; also as A collection of botanical illustrations [title page title; may be catalogued as either.] Kevin Weldon & Associates. (263 pp.) [Large format. Good quality watercolours of plants of the hills of southwestern N.S.W. Scarcely any text information.]

Williams, J.B. Plants of coastal heath, scrub and swamp-heath communities in northern New South Wales. UNE, 1985. (19 pp.) [A checklist of plants of the habitats indicated, covering the NSW North Coast north from the Macleay River. Gives scientific name, common name, and habitat (by community type). No identification details.]

Victoria and South Australia

Costermans, L.F. Trees of Victoria - an illustrated field guide. Self-publ. by author, 1986. (84 pp.) [Pocket guide, with line drawings and short descriptions.]

Dashorst, G.R.M., & J.P. Jessop Plants of the Adelaide Plains and Hills. Kangaroo Press, 1990. (224 pp.). [Very short descriptions and distribution statements are matched to rather good paintings. Fairly comprehensive for the area; includes fungi, bryophytes, lichens, and introduced plants.]

Eardley, C.M. Wildflowers of the Adelaide Hills. Axiom Books, 1984. (109 pp.) [Short descriptions and colour painting plates; not comprehensive.]

Elliot, R. Plant Identikit - common native plants of .... [Series of illustrated pocket sized booklets for various (mostly Victorian) regions, incl. Sherbrooke Forest & Dandenongs, Grampians, Wilsons Promontory, and Otway Ranges.] Pioneer, 1984. (64 pp. each).

Jackson, I. The flora of Kangaroo Island - from the sketchbooks of Ida Jackson. S.A. NPWS, Dept of Env't & Planning, 1988. [An unusual book, but potentially useful for the Island. It treats the island as a number of zones, and for each lists (alphabetically) the families/genera/species that occur there; each species is given a short paragraph description. Very rough line illustrations complement the text.

McCann, I.R. The Alps in flower. Victorian Nat'l Parks Assocn, 1989. (62 pp.) [Colour photo guide to prominent native species, with common and scientific names, and a very brief statement of habit, flowering season, and distribution within major national parks. Lacks good written descriptions.]

McCann, I. The Mallee in flower. Vict. Nat. Pks Assoc., 1989 (120 pp.) [Colour photo guide to prominent native species, with common and scientific names, and a very brief statement of habit, flowering season, and distribution within mallee reserves. Lacks good written descriptions.]

McCann, I. The coast and hinterland in flower. Vict. Nat. Pks Assoc., 1992 (120 pp.) [Colour-photo guide to prominent native species of the Victorian coastal and near-coastal regions. Common and scientific names are given, with a very brief statement of habit, flowering season, and distribution within reserves. Despite the brevity of written information, this is a handy guide to 372 species.]

Prescott, A. It's blue with five petals - wildflowers of the Adelaide region. Self-publ. Ann Prescott, 1988. (400 pp.) [Excellent though geographically limited. Uses flower colour and easily observed floral features in a very non-technical visual key system.]

S.G.A.P. Maroondah, Inc. Flora of Melbourne - A guide to the indigenous plants of the Greater Melbourne area. Hyland House Publishing Pty Limited. 1991. (360 pp.) [Descriptions of over 1200 indigenous spp. with line drawings and colour plates of nearly 1000sp.]

Woolcock, L. Wildflowers of the Mount Lofty Ranges - Fleurieu Peninsula to Barossa Valley. Wakefield Press, 1985. (186 pp.). [Brief plain English descriptions and colour photographs. No keys.]

Tasmania

Kirkpatrick, J.B. & S. Backhouse Native trees of Tasmania. Self-publ. by S. Backhouse, Hobart, 1975. (135 pp.) [Pictorial key; line drawings of plants with notes on diagnostic features.]

Queensland

Williams, K.A.W. Native Plants of Queensland. Vol 1 (3rd edn) 1984, Vol 2 1984, Vol 3 1987. [self. publ. by author, Nth Ipswich Qld]. [Short descriptive paragraph and colour plates of a wide range of species; each volume is alphabetical by species, and there is some doubling up of treatments. Valuable adjunct to the Flora of SE Qld, and covers the whole state, but not comprehensive. Text information is lamentably brief and inconsistent.]

Pearson, S. & A. Pearson Plants of Central Queensland. SGAP, ?1989 (416 pp.) An excellent guide to the area, dealing mainly with shrubby species, all native. High quality colour photos of each plant, with unnecessarily short descriptions of a couple of lines. A simple key based on flower colour and petal number is provided.]

Western Australia

Erickson, R. et al. Flowers & plants of Western Australia.. Reed, 1973. [Over 500 good quality colour plates; very little descriptive text.]

Kenneally, K. Checklist of vascular plants of the Kimberley, Western Australia. Handbook No 14, W.A. Naturalists Club, Perth, 1989. [Not an identification guide, but a listing of all native and introduced plants known to occur in the area; complementary natural (family/genera) and alphabetical (by genus/species) lists, with authors.]

Mitchell, A.A. & D.G. Wilcox Plants of the arid shrublands of Western Australia. Univ. W.A. Press/WA Dept of Agric., 1988. (325 pp.) [Excellent colour-photo guide to major shrub and grass species of the WA interior (not incl. the South-west). Selective, oriented to the pastoral industry. Each plant illustrated and described, with notes on distribution, habitat and forage value.]

Petheram, R.J. & B. Kok Plants of the Kimberley region of Western Australia. Univ. W.A. Press, 1983 (556 pp.) [Somewhat dated and not comprehensive, but a useful handbook for this important area. Descriptions of species, with illustrations of varying quality.]

Northern Territory and Central Australia

Brennan, K. Wildflowers of Kakadu. Self-publ. by author, Jabiru N.T. 1986. [Selected native species only; excellent colour photos with short caption notes.]

Clark, M. & S. Traynor Plants of the tropical woodland. Conservation Commission of N.T., 1987. (132 pp.) [Brief non-specialist descriptions, with limited notes on habitat and uses.]

Clifford, H.T. & I.D. Cowie Northern Territory flowering plants: a key to families. N.T. Conservation Commission Bot. Bull. No 12, 1992. (93 pp.) [The keys, divided into dicots and monocots (under the accurate but - for the general reader - unnecessarily confusing names of Magnoliatae and Liliatae respectively) are very usable; the leads are short and the characters used are mostly easy for the lay user. The second half of the book lists the families and their diagnostic features.]

King, P. (ed.) Plant Identikit - Common native plants of Central Australia. N.T. Gov't Printer, 1986. (64 pp.) [One of a growing series of "Plant identikit", illustrated pocket sized booklets for various regions. Moderately useful illustrations, brief descriptions, and notes on confusable species in the area. 42 species are mentioned.]

Urban, A. Wildflowers and plants of Central Australia. Southbank Editions, 1990. (240 pp.) [Excellent compact field guide, good colour photos with short plain-language descriptions.]

Wightman, G. & M. Andrews Plants of Northern Territory monsoon vine forests (vol. 1). Conservation Commission of N.T., 1989. (163 pp.) [Contains a brief introduction to the floristics, structure and ecology of these important communities, and then one page treatmentas arranged by growth form (trees, shrubs, climbers, etc.). No keys, and not comprehensive, but a good selecvtion of the plants likely to be encountered. A brief description of each, with habitat and distribution statements, local occurences, and notes on uses and ecology, all accompanied by fair-quality line drawings.]

Lord Howe Island

Pickard, J. Vegetation of Lord Howe Island. Cunninghamia 1(2): 133-265 (1983) [A structural and floristic analyis of the island's flora, including map of vegetation types.]

Rodd, A.N. & J. Pickard Census of vascular flora of Lord Howe Island. Cunninghamia 1(2): 133-265 (1983).

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Updated by Andrew Lyne

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