An authoritative and indispensable guide to Australia's fascinating trees, fully updated and revised.

Colour plates and tree descriptions - Leaf shapes - Flower parts and leaf arrangements_

Trees tell stories about places. Australia has some of the tallest, oldest, fattest and most unusual trees in the world. They have changed over thousands of years, adapting to this continent's deserts, mountains, and coasts. Many have found clever ways of dealing with drought and fire. Their leaves, flowers and seeds are food for birds, insects and mammals. Old trees have lots of hollows, which make good homes for possums, sugar gliders, birds and bees. But trees aren't just important for other animals, we need them too. What trees breathe out, we breathe in. They are a vital part of the Earth's ecosystems. When you first stand in a forest, the trees all seem the same. But if you look more closely, they are each a little different, like people. This book is a love song to Australian trees, from the red ironbark to the grey gum, the Moreton Bay fig to the Queensland bottle tree. The first book for children from one of Australia's most beloved authors.

"The Australian coastline is 18% occupied by a very special and beneficial habitat of extraordinary trees and larger shrubs bathed regularly by flooding tides and washing waves. This practical guide describes each of these highly adapted plants." - - Back cover.

This title in New Holland s award-winning Green Guides series investigates the ever-popular subject of Australia s trees and shrubs, celebrating the beauty, great diversity and unique evolution of the country s forests.The structure of this book is similar to that of other titles in the series.Fact panels cover interesting aspects of the subject.Questions answered include:what is the difference between a tree and a shrub? what age can Australian trees reach?how tall do trees grow in Australia?and how many species of trees and shrubs exist in Australia? to name just a few.Other sections look at how trees reproduce and how they evolved.Identification spreads cover all the key species and families which occur across Australia, including many species of conifers, eucalypts and wattles/acacias.There are sections on how to identify bottlebrushes, banksias, casuarinas, grevilleas, figs, laurels and many others, including many of the trees and shrubs found in Australia s species-rich rainforests.The many beautiful images are taken from the author s own collection which has been built up over many decades.

Eucalypts are a familiar part of the Australian landscape and an integral part of their identity. They have farmed them and used them to build houses, furniture, roads, and bridges since the beginning of white settlement. They have been inspired by them, painted them, made films about them, written books about them, and of course Aboriginal Australians have long made musical instruments from them. Though a small number are found as native plants in several other countries, Eucalypts are a very Australian tree. This book celebrates their diversity, their beauty, and the role they play in the history, culture, and economy of Australia. It looks at their evolution, biology, horticulture, and ecology, together with their classification and the botanists involved. Through historic and contemporary images, it examines the many ways in which they have served Aboriginal, colonial, and contemporary Australians in both practical and aesthetic ways. Eucalypts have quite literally been the building blocks of that nation and this beautiful book tells their complete story for the first time.