Appendix 6 Field Guides for Plants.

I was asked by one A. Nonny Mouse through a comment on the first tangible post what field guides we used.  here is their comment.

Thank you for sharing the details of your trips. As someone new to Australia and who intends to be able to take trips like these at some point this is very informative.
Could you let me know what fieldguide(s?) you use to identify the plants?

I was going to put up a substantive comment in response but it was getting long so I am creating this instead.

That is a very good question to which there is no simple answer, primarily because of the number of species one can encounter.  For birds there are about 800 species in all of Australia.  For plants, my local group based around Canberra has identified 1100 species within a 150km radius.  My guess would be that in a trip such as we took there could easily be 5,000 species (especially including some of the rainforests.

• For the North Coast of NSW we have used with some success "From Mangroves to Mountains" by Leiper et al.  It's about SE Queensland but the plants don't bother about State borders.It includes 2200 species!
• For the inland there is somewhat lower diversity and we try to sort things out with "Plants of Inland Australia" By Moore P.This covers all the 'big sandy dry bit' in the middle of Australia so there are quite a few species not found in NSW.  It lists about 1100 species.
• For the SE of the State "Native Plants of the Sydney region" by Fairley and Moore is very useful.  It lists something like 700sp (estimating from the common names in the Index).

I'd hope that between those three, with a bit of luck and a lot of prayer you should be able to get most anything you see to at least family, and perhaps genus.

If you have time you might get lucky at a Visitor Information Centre if there is a plant group active in the local area.  By was of example there is a very good guide put out by a group in Narranderra which would help with many of the species in the upper Murrumbidgee and the Catchment Management Authorities used to put out good stuff.  (Of course the NSW Government has completely gutted the CMAs - apparently they were concerned about the environment and were getting in the way of stuff that benefited the big end of town.  Perhaps Local land Services will continue the work, but don't hold your breath.

For a reference the "Flora of New South Wales" Harden G editor is the best around in hard copy.  Apart from being 4 huge volumes (and the one dealing with monocots including lilies and orchids is very hard to find - we haven't managed it yet) it is quite expensive and getting a bit long in the tooth.

As an online resource PlantNet is more or less the electronic equivalent of the foregoing.  It isn't really a field as you need to have a fair idea of what you're dealing with before hooking in.  It is also driven by the ideology - or possibly politics - of the Botanic Gardens in Sydney who reject (inter alia) the nomenclature of orchids proposed by Jones D.  However its about the best around.