Hi All,
My wife asked me to post this to you wonderful lot. She’s after guides for both
Wildflowers, and
Trees — native and non-native.
I told her I thought any book covering all of Aus would be either too big or would cover too little. So regional guides would also be good. We live in the Sydney Basin.
And she wants a guide that doesn’t require specialist knowledge — ones in which it is easy to look up trees and wildflowers even if you don’t know what they are!
(Any great guides on mushrooms and fungi out there?)
Cheers and thanks in advance, Gordon Cain, who still isn’t sure what’s a gum tree and what’s eucalypt and what’s an ironbark. . . Schofields, NW Sydney
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Hi Gordon,
I have a CD-ROM titled “Coastal Plants of the Royal National Park”, which I bought a couple of years ago, before the gift shop at Audley was closed. It was produced by the Sutherland Group, Australian Native Plants Society. It has over 300 species and although it covers a rather limited area and habitat I have found it quite useful as I spend a bit of time birding there. More to the point, it allows you to enter various characteristics, such as flower colour, number of petals, leaf shape etc. and gives you a “short list’ of images. A bit like the identification facility on the Birds in Backyards site. I believe there is an opening here for potential authors to extend the concept to other areas and make them available as CD-ROM and/or “Apps”, which seem to be the way of the future. This was touched on in last weeks thread “iPhone App for Mammals”.
Regards
Roger.
I suggest the new edition of Fairley & Moore. Here is a recent review Native Plants of the Sydney Region.
Alan Fairley and Philip Moore. 3rd Ed. Allen and Unwin. 624 pages. RRP $60
My original copy of the first (1989) edition of this classic is much-battered, despite its plastic covering. This is because, despite it being an A4-sized hardback, I have always used it as a field guide. And although it limits itself to the area from Nowra to Newcastle, and inland to include all the Blue Mountains, I always take it to areas south of that. I missed the second edition (2002), so am even more ready than I would have been for this landmark reissue. Nor is this in any way just a reprint; it represents a total rewrite, taking into account the rapidly-changing taxonomic understandings in some groups. (What to adopt of these changes is a vexed issue for an author of any field guide of course, and must be subjective. With regard to orchids they have, somewhat courageously, opted to go for David Jones’ breakup of Caladenia, but not Pterostylis. The rationale for this is not offered.) Another significant change is in the size; while it is still a decidedly chunky lump of a book, it is now A5 ie only half the dimensions, and very suitable for a backpack. While the blurb claims ‘many new photographs’, some random sampling suggests that at least since 1989 they have all been replaced, and the quality is generally good. While I have long been on record as preferring well-painted illustrations for a field guide over photos, I must admit that the task of so illustrating 1400 species would be a daunting – and expensive – one. If you have an interest in plants, and spend a reasonable part of your time in the area north-east of Canberra, I think you need this book; this is certainly true if you own the first edition, but if you have the 2002 version you might like to have a look to see if you think it’s worth it. My old one is about to enter a restful retirement, and itsyounger sibling will be getting a thorough workout, starting very soon!
Ian Fraser is a Canberra-based professional naturalist
For Australia? Almost definitely no as the science just isn’t there. Even very large and obvious mushrooms here remain unnamed and/or in taxonomic flux. I’d love to hear otherwise, but I’ve only ever seen a couple of okay guides for Australian fungi. Bruce Fuhrer’s “A field guide to Australian Fungi” is one and the other is restricted to the fungi of the south-west.
I suspect this is an topic where the best guides, going forward, are going to be electronic only. There are a couple of okay Web sites for Australian mushrooms.
If you’re looking for a great field guide for mushrooms, David Arora’s “Mushrooms Demystified” is peerless. It’s for North America but a lof the information on families and so on applies here as well. ===============================
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Gordon
Field Guide to the Native Plants of Sydney, Les Robinson, and, has line drawings and simple keys Native Plants of the Sydney District An Identification Guide, A. Fairley and P. Moore, photographs
Above easy to use two books will get most of the plants for you from Wollongong to Newcastle
Flora of the Sydney Region R. Carolin and M. Tindale, fairly technical but covers same area
There are several other good guides to rainforest plants, vines etc but the top two books should get you started easily.
Greg Little
There is no national guide, nothing even close. For identifying plants in the Sydney basin using a single volume I’d recommend Les Robinson’s “Field Guide to the Native Plants of Sydney” (Kangaroo Press) is probably the best place to start. No pictures, but good B&W line drawings and a pictorial key, it’s easy to carry and to use. It will set you back about $40.
David James, Sydney burunglaut07@yahoo.com ==============================
Sent: Tuesday, 14 June 2011 6:15 PM
Hi All,
My wife asked me to post this to you wonderful lot. She’s after guides for both
Wildflowers, and
Trees — native and non-native.
I told her I thought any book covering all of Aus would be either too big or would cover too little. So regional guides would also be good. We live in the Sydney Basin.
And she wants a guide that doesn’t require specialist knowledge — ones in which it is easy to look up trees and wildflowers even if you don’t know what they are!
(Any great guides on mushrooms and fungi out there?)
Cheers and thanks in advance, Gordon Cain, who still isn’t sure what’s a gum tree and what’s eucalypt and what’s an ironbark. . . Schofields, NW Sydney
===============================
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send the message: unsubscribe (in the body of the message, with no Subject line)
http://birding-aus.org =============================== ===============================
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send the message: unsubscribe (in the body of the message, with no Subject line)
http://birding-aus.org ===============================