For the amateur, whether gardener, bushwalker or naturalist, and even for the professional scientist who works in other fields of biology, there has been no readily available source of information on how to go about identifying Flowering Plants. There are many books of excellent photographs but if the plant of interest is not included, what do you do next? With the advent of computers and the internet, countless plant photographs can be revealed with the click of a mouse. But can you be sure of their identity? Botanical science has certainly not been immune to the technological revolution affecting so many facets of life in the 21st century.
More and more plant identification resources are becoming available online, but at present however, practical Flowering Plant identification still relies on the skills of dissection, observation and interpretation, aided by the accumulation of experience and knowledge. These attributes are not readily incorporated into electronic devices. We have attempted here to record the traditional approach to plant identification while pointing to some of the innovations, such as multiple access keys, that are part of the electronic age.
This introduction to the subject describes the structure of flowers and the process of identification, with the intention of making the procedure more straightforward and more conclusive. It is intended to be used in conjunction with other published work such as field guides and floras (a flora is a book about the plants of an area, usually with descriptions and keys for identification; some are now available online). The botanical language is often seen as a stumbling block and although many terms have been explained within the text, the glossary included here (now much extended) covers most of the terminology used in current floras. The glossary should also help readers who wish to delve further into the botanical literature provided in the references.
The principles of plant identification are universal so the basic information presented here is applicable anywhere in the world. Many of the drawings and photographs depict very widespread species, sometimes established well beyond their original ranges. The samples for illustration were all sourced from plants growing wild or in gardens in southeastern Australia.
The botanical names used here for plant species generally follow those accepted in the new online versions of
Flora of Victoria (https://vicflora.rbg.vic.gov.au) and
Horticultural Flora of SE Australia (https://hortflora.rbg.vic.gov.au).
Numerous changes have been implemented in this third, revised edition. Most of the obvious text changes are in response to the significant progress made in recent decades in our understanding of plant relationships through advances in DNA analysis. These advances have underpinned proposals to modify older plant classification schemes considerably, and precipitated the publication of a new, more collaborative approach which has been well received by the botanical community. The new classification scheme (discussed further in Chapter 6) has necessitated rearranging the sequence of plant families in this edition. (In Chapter 8, families are numbered to assist with their location in the text; the numbers have no relevance beyond this book.) Accounts of several extra families have been added, and changes to the limits of others have meant that some families are now much smaller than they were, and some are much larger. In all, the selected families serve to illustrate a broad range of structure while still keeping the book to a manageable size.
Digital photography and computer software have allowed the range of photographs to be improved and extended, particularly close-ups taken with the aid of a microscope.
The ‘routes through keys’ sections in previous editions have been omitted since the texts upon which they were based are now long out of date. A key to the species illustrated in this book has been included to serve as an example of the way keys are constructed, as well as to help establish if an unknown plant sample can be matched with an illustration.