AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 



This descriptive and illustrated handbook of the flora of South 

 Australia has been written to assist students, plant-lovers, or persons 

 engaged in pastoral or agricultural pursuits, who may wish to know 

 something about the native and naturalised plants of the State. 



Locality and time of flowering are given after the description of 

 each plant, and, where an alien is in question, the country of origin 

 is added. In those parts of the State which enjoy regular winter 

 rains, the flowering period can be stated with a fair amount of 

 accuracy, but in the dry lands of the Far North and West there is 

 much less regularity. "If rain should fall in summer," writes the 

 Rev. H. Kempe, with reference to the country along the Finke River, 

 just north of our boundary, "then nearly all species of flowering 

 plants, even most of the shrubs, commence to blossom a second time. ' ' 



Where the same plant has been found in many different places, the 

 localities are summarised in broad terms. Thus the phrase ' ' Southern 

 districts" implies the country from Encounter Bay northwards to 

 about the latitude of Gladstone and Terowie, and usually includes 

 Yorke Peninsula and Kangaroo Island. "Murray lands" comprise 

 the great low-lying and rather dry area through which the River 

 Murray finds its way to the lakes and the sea, and which is bounded on 

 the west by the slopes of the Mount Lofty Ranges, and stretches north- 

 ward from the neighborhood of Bordertown towards the railway run- 

 ning from Peterborough to Broken Hill. According to geologists this is 

 part of the ancient estuary into which the Murray and the Darling 

 once flowed separately. The Flinders Range, beginning at Crystal 

 Brook, subsides into the great northern plains near Marree (Hergott 

 Springs) and the northern end of Lake Frome. The dry country 

 to the north of those points, and extending to the borders of Queens- 

 land and the Northern Territory, is generalised as the l ' Far North. ' ' 

 This district is especially arid in the Lake Eyre Basin. Westward of 

 Oodnadatta the land rises gradually towards the Everard, Musgrave, 

 and Birksgate Ranges — the "Far North-West." This distant corner 

 of South Australia, accessible only by camel expeditions, has been very 

 imperfectly explored in a botanical sense, and the same is true of the 

 territory to the south of the ranges — the great treeless Nullarbor 

 Plain and the desolate and often sandy country toward Ooldea and 

 Tarcoola, now stations on the East-West Railway. All this vast area 

 slopes gradually southwards to the shores of the Great Bight. . The 

 "South-East" is the well- watered and often swampy region southward 



