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Centre for Plant Biodiversity Research

Plant Identification - Introduction

This is a listing of books, and a very few journal papers, for basic botanical reference and plant identification (with some emphasis on native flora of N.S.W. and the A.C.T.). It is prepared for use by students, by the Australian National Botanic Gardens (ANBG) Visitor Information Centre, and other users. This bibliography is intended for the non-specialist, and lists fairly broad-scale works. Not all are in print, and some may be found in fairly specialist libraries only.

This listing is not comprehensive. Many very local field guides (some of them excellent for the restricted area covered) are not included. Some of the books included here have a horticultural dimension, but in general horticultural texts are not listed. Some older books listed should be used with caution, since species circumscriptions and nomenclature may have changed considerably.

For Canberra residents, some of the reference books listed below are available at the ANBG Visitor Information Centre, and are available there for your use while you are identifying plants using the ANBG Public Access Herbarium. Do not hesitate to ask at the Visitor Information Centre if you wish to use the available books. If you live in another State, your local Botanic Gardens or State Herbarium, or Department of Agriculture office, will often have a similar public reference library containing many of these books.

If you are uncertain where to start, or how to use an identification key, a good introduction is given in:

    Harden, G.J. & J.B. Williams How to identify plants. UNE, 1984 (41 pp.).

A more advanced guide to identification techniques is the excellent

    Clarke, I. & H. Lee Name that flower. Melbourne University Press, 1993 (260 pp.). This retails for around $30 and provides an easy introduction to understanding the parts of the plant, the necessary terminology, and for many native plants may allow identification to family or genus level. It is not however for identification to species, but a "how to" book.

Another source for understanding plant morphology and descriptive terms is

    Bell, A.D. Plant form. Oxford University Press, 1991. (341 pp.). This gives a very clear idea of structure, especially for less familiar or more complicated situations (grasses, daisies, etc).

Plant nomenclature - how the scientific naming system operates - is dealt with in very readable fashion in

    Lumley, P. & R. Spencer Plant names - a guide to botanical nomenclature (2nd edn). Ornamental Plants series no. 2, Royal Bot. Gard. Melbourne, 1991.

An excellent overall introduction to modern botanical theory is

    Raven, P.H. et al. Biology of plants (5th edn) Worth,1992. This covers, in a very readable style, the origins and evolution of the major plant groups, their life cycles, structure and ecology.

If (in Canberra) you want to see a live specimen of a native plant, check to see if it is growing in the Australian National Botanic Gardens (either at Black Mountain or at Jervis Bay) by using:

    Richardson, M. & B. Barnsley Catalogue of living plants. Australian National Botanic Gardens, 1991 (226 pp.)

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