Plants of the Victorian High Country: A Field Guide for Walkers

By John Murphy and Bill Dowling

This book will allow anyone with little botanical knowledge to identify plants that they are most likely to encounter while walking in Victoria's High Country. The guide is written in plain English and includes a glossary of botanical terms.
Plants of the Victorian High Country contains species descriptions and photographs of plants to be found along popular walking tracks, such as Harrietville to Mt Feathertop and Mt Hotham. Plants of the montane, sub-alpine and alpine zones are included, sorted into five easily distinguished groups: herbs, daisy herbs, low woody shrubs, tall shrubs and trees, and eucalypts. The guide features straightforward identification keys and clear photos of the leaves, flowers and stems of the plant.
If you are a nature lover, planning to walk in the Victorian High Country, this book is an essential addition to your backpack.

• Language: English
• Publisher: CSIRO PUBLISHING
• Release date: Aug 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9780643104655

Book preview

PLANTS

OF THE VICTORIAN HIGH COUNTRY

PLANTS

OF THE VICTORIAN HIGH COUNTRY

JOHN MURPHY and BILL DOWLING

© John Murphy and Bill Dowling 2012

All rights reserved. Except under the conditions described in the Australian Copyright Act 1968 and subsequent amendments, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, duplicating or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. Contact CSIRO PUBLISHING for all permission requests.

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

Murphy, John P. (John Paul), 1944–

Plants of the Victorian high country: a field guide for walkers/by John Murphy and Bill Dowling.

9780643104631 (pbk.)

9780643104648 (epdf)

9780643104655 (epub)

Includes index.

Mountain plants – Victoria – Identification.

Walking – Victoria – Guidebooks.

Alpine regions – Victoria – Guidebooks.

Dowling, Bill, 1947–

581.9945

Published by

CSIRO PUBLISHING

150 Oxford Street (PO Box 1139)

Collingwood VIC 3066

Australia

Front cover (main image): the Victorian High Country (photo by Bill Dowling)

Front cover (flowers, clockwise from top left): Veronica derwentiana, Xerochrysum subundulatum, Calytrix tetragona, Arthropodium milleflorum, Acaena novae-zelandiae, Wahlenbergia ceracea, Daviesia ulicifolia, Ranunculus sp. (photos by Bill Dowling)

Back cover: Correa lawrenceana (photo by Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne)

Photographs are by Bill Dowling unless otherwise noted.

Set in 9.5/12 Adobe Minion Pro and Myriad MM

Edited by Lachlan Garland

Cover design by Jenny Cowan

Text design by James Kelly

Typeset by Desktop Concepts Pty Ltd, Melbourne

Printed in China by 1010 Printing International Ltd

Without the generous support of the Australian Plants Society Victoria Inc., it would not have been possible to publish this work at an affordable recommended retail price.

CSIRO PUBLISHING publishes and distributes scientific, technical and health science books, magazines and journals from Australia to a worldwide audience and conducts these activities autonomously from the research activities of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). The views expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of, and should not be attributed to, the publisher or CSIRO.

Original print edition:

The paper this book is printed on is in accordance with the rules of the Forest Stewardship Council®. The FSC® promotes environmentally responsible, socially beneficial and economically viable management of the world’s forests.

Contents

About this book

How to use the book

Acknowledgements

Australian Plants Society Victoria Inc.

Other useful books

The environment

Flower types

Plant descriptions

Herbs (other than daisies)

Daisy herbs

Low woody shrubs

Tall shrubs and trees

Eucalypts

Glossary

Plants listed by family

Index

About this book

Our aim is to allow walkers with little botanical knowledge to identify the plants they are most likely to encounter. The book is written in plain English, but we have included a glossary and diagrams to explain those botanical terms we could not avoid.

The three basic plant categories are family, genus and species. So the alpine ash, Eucalyptus delegatensis, is:

in the Myrtaceae family (all family names end in ‘aceae’)

of the Eucalyptus genus (all genus names are italicised, with the initial letter in capitals)

the species delegatensis (all species names are italicised, with no capitals).

While the family name is important to help you determine what goes with what, it is not usually given, so scientific names generally consist of two words – in this case, Eucalyptus delegatensis.

Common names like alpine ash are also given where appropriate, but please remember that there are no agreements about common names and that they are often unreliable labels. For example, the Victorian, South Australian and Tasmanian blue gums are actually three different species.

In some cases, individual species can be difficult to distinguish. In these cases we have only identified the genus. Grasses and sedges can be very difficult to identify, so we have not included them in this publication.

How to use the book

We have selected the most common High Country plants. The book has 119 plant descriptions accompanied by 110 photographs. For ease of identification we have sorted them into five easily distinguished groups: