Flora and Fauna of Alpine Australasia: Ages and Origins
Botany Natural History Field Guide Conservation Ecology Australian Flora & Fauna Evolutionary Biology Science Reference
First released by CSIRO in 1986, Bryan Barlow’s Flora and Fauna of Alpine Australasia: Ages and Origins is the go-to reference for anyone who wants to understand how Australia’s high-country plants and animals came to look the way they do today. In 543 generously illustrated pages, Barlow combines rigorous botany with a storyteller’s eye, tracing the evolutionary journey of alpine eucalypts, snow gums, cushion plants, pygmy possums and corroboree frogs from Gondwanan times through Ice-Age refugia to the present-day mountaintop “islands” that conservationists now fight to protect. The result is a single volume that doubles as a field guide and a natural-history narrative, written in plain English that welcomes serious amateurs, young adult naturalists and professional ecologists alike.
What makes this particular copy a collector’s score is its condition: only minor foxing dots a handful of leaves, the colour plates remain crisp and the tight paperback binding still opens flat for easy reference beside a rucksack or microscope. Because the original print run was modest and most copies went straight into university labs, clean second-hand examples are scarce—especially inside Australia where bushwalkers and native-plant societies keep them in constant demand. Owning it gives you the same authority Barlow’s peers rely on for accurate species descriptions, ecological time-lines and climate-change baselines, all without the academic price tag of a new specialist monograph.
Beyond the science, the book is a practical springboard for gardeners designing high-altitude rockeries, hikers who want to put names to the tiny orchids under their boots, or students preparing projects on Australia’s unique biodiversity hotspots. Every page is generously cross-referenced to current herbarium records, so you can move from Barlow’s historical context straight into today’s conservation databases. Whether you’re expanding a natural-history shelf, planning an alpine garden or simply hunting for a well-preserved piece of Australiana, this copy offers decades of field-tested knowledge in one durable, backpack-ready volume.
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