The Lauraceae are a large family of about 50 genera and over 2500 species, with a mainly pantropical distribution.
Within Australia there are 8 genera and 130 species. One genus (Cassytha, 23 species) consists of virtually leafless semiparasitic lianes. The others are leafy trees or shrubs, confined mainly to rainforest communities.
This book provides for the first time a complete description and illustration of the venation and cuticle characters of the leafy members of the family in Australia.
The Lauraceae are strongly represented in suites of fossil leaves from the Early (Eocene) and Middle (Miocene) Tertiary of Australia. Many of these fossils are currently unnamed, and this book should provide a most useful tool for palaeobotanists wishing to place the fossils in context with modern taxa.
The book provides an independent suite of characters that will complement the descriptions of the gross morphology and reproductive structures of the family in Flora of Australia, Volume 2.
It will be of interest to anatomists, morphologists, taxonomists, palaeobotanists and evolutionary botanists.
About the Authors
David Christophel has been a Lecturer in Botany at Adelaide University for 20 years. His early research centred on southern Australian Tertiary plant microfossils. More recently he has concentrated on leaf-based taxonomy of extant rainforest taxa.
Andrew Rowett is a Research Scientist for Minerals & Energy South Australia, where he specialises in biostratigraphy based on leaf cuticular fragments.
About this book
Book series
Flora of Australia Supplementary Series Number 6
Publishers
Australian Biological Resources Study
Year
1996
Authors
D.C.Christophel
A.I.Rowett
ISBN-10
0 642 25067 7
ISBN-13
978 0 642 25067 4
Size
297 × 210 mm (A4)
Number of pages
217 pages
index, bibliography
Binding
Softcover
section stitched
Illustrations
66 black and white plates
122 maps
Available from
This book is available from bookshops which stock botanical titles or CSIRO Publishing
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