6-462: Flora Australiensis: a description of the plants of the Australian Territory , more commonly referred to as Flora Australiensis , and also known by its standard abbreviation Fl. Austral. , is a seven-volume Flora of Australia published between 1863 and 1878 by George Bentham , with the assistance of Ferdinand von Mueller . It was one of the famous Kew series of colonial floras, and
12-447: A Flora covers can be either geographically or politically defined. Floras usually require some specialist botanical knowledge to use with any effectiveness. A Flora often contains diagnostic keys. Often these are dichotomous keys , which require the user to repeatedly examine a plant, and decide which one of two alternatives given in the Flora best applies to the plant. Floras produced at
18-605: A flora from Australia while in Australia by Bentham and Joseph Dalton Hooker since historic collections of Australian species were all held in European herbaria which Mueller could not access from Australia. Mueller did eventually produce his own flora of Australia, the Systematic Census of Australian Plants published in 1882 extended the work of Bentham with the addition of new species and taxonomic revisions. Flora Australiensis
24-464: The first flora of any large continental area that had ever been finished. In total the flora included descriptions of 8125 species. Bentham prepared the flora from Kew; with Mueller, the first plant taxonomist residing permanently in Australia, loaning the entire collection of the National Herbarium of Victoria to Bentham over the course of several years. Mueller had been dissuaded from preparing
30-505: The most part extracts of this work. Flora (publication) A Flora is a book or other work which describes the plant species occurring in an area or time period, often with the aim of allowing identification. The term is usually capitalized to distinguish it from the use of " flora " to mean the plants rather than their descriptions. Some classic and modern Floras are listed below. Traditionally Floras are books, but some are now published on CD-ROM or websites . The area that
36-578: Was the standard reference work on the Australian flora for more than a century. As late as 1988, James Willis wrote that " Flora Australiensis still remains the only definitive work on the vascular vegetation of the whole continent." According to Nancy Burbidge , "it represents a prodigious intellectual effort never equalled." Flora Australiensis is credited with forming the basis of subsequently published regional floras; 19th century floras were published for all states except Western Australia, they were for
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