Bright Green and Gold: The Alpine Flora and Vegetation of Tasmania

Bright Green and Gold offers a concise summary of the natural history of the Tasmanian alpine environment, a region that continues to attract huge numbers of ecotourists each year and that contains some of the most notable scenery in Australia. There is global interest in its unique and spectacular biological features, as confirmed by David Attenborough’s inclusion of some of its plants in a recent documentary. No such guide for lay readers has been available. Jamie Kirkpatrick, the noted conservation ecologist, joined with Georgina Davis, who has provided 78 high-quality line drawings, and the late photographer Peter Dombrovskis, who died recently taking photographs on one of these mountains. Dombrovskis’ 24 sumptuous photographs are a testament to his art and to the immense natural beauty of the region. The mountains of Tasmania possess an unusual alpine vegetation, largely dominated by floriferous or coniferous shrubs, and a flora with strong affinities to those of the other southern lands (although half the species found in the latter are confined to Tasmania). Bright Green and Gold celebrates the Tasmanian high country in three ways. It provides a minimally technical account of contemporary knowledge of the ecology and plant geography of the vegetation and flora of the mountains, this account being focused on those areas in which tree growth is absent. It provides a guide to the major plant communities of the vegetation type and, finally, serves as an aid to the identification of the more than 400 vascular plant species that occur in the alpine zone.