Author(s): Elizabeth Edgar and H. E. Connor

NZ Flora & Fauna

Flora of New Zealand: Volume V: Grasses is the first fully integrated Flora in the series, covering both native and naturalised grasses, and completes the vascular Flora of New Zealand. Included are formal nomenclature, descriptions, distributions records, ecological information, and keys to genera of about 400 species. It also features excellent line drawings by Sabrina Malcolm and colour illustrations by Keith West, with photographs by Peter Johnson. Grasses are everywhere in New Zealand: on hillsides and roadsides; on cliffs and escarpments; in National Parks and city parks; on sand dunes and on gravel beaches; in fresh water and in salt water; in native forests and in plantation forests; in pastures, among crops, and in fallows; and at the tops of mountains where they have only lichens for company. There are 188 native species and 226 naturalised grasses in New Zealand. This Grass Flora is about them. This book is an identification manual intended for all who are involved with grasses â plant and animal ecologists, farmers, commercial managers, weed controllers, conservationists, biocode administrators, horticulturists, land-use specialists, and soil conservators. There are keys and descriptions, distribution and ecological data. To complement these there are 24 black and white plates of grass flowers, 10 colour plates of habitats, and two colour plates with 16 paintings of the florets of native species of Rytidosperma. Volume V completes the Flora of New Zealand series started in 1961 by Dr H. H. Allan's Volume I on Indigenous Tracheophyta; but 120 years have elapsed since John Buchanan in his Indigenous Grasses of New Zealand, described and illustrated 89 grasses in the first book ever devoted solely to New Zealand grasses. To precede the publication of this volume Drs Edgar and Connor wrote a long series of revisions of large and difficult genera, such as Poa, Festuca, and Chionochloa, but even the smaller genera needed consideration. These tasks took almost 20 years, because there had been few revisions and no consolidated taxonomic account of the New Zealand grasses for 75 years, and never a complete account of all of them in one book. Grasses are among the most significant economic plants in the world, the cereals - wheat, oats, barley, rice and maize - and the pasture grasses - ryegrass, cocksfoot, timothy, fescues and blue-grasses. Grasses are weeds too - twitch, Johnson grass, barley grass and nassella tussock. Grasses are often very beautiful. For the first time all the grasses are here in one book.