Plant Life of Western Australia

Dr Beard came to Western Australia in 1961 as Foundation Director of the Botanic Garden being established in Perth’s King’s Park. Dr Beard rapidly became one of the leading botanists with expertise in the State’s plants and produced a Descriptive Catalogue of West Australian Plants in 1965.

Series of vegetation maps were produced and the project was finally completed in 1981. About 200,000 km were covered by vehicle in 17 years. As a result Dr Beard acquired an unrivalled knowledge of the landscapes and their plant cover over the whole immense area of Western Australia.

This book is an interpretation designed for the general reader. It was first published in 1990. John Beard died in 2011. This new edition has been revised by Alex George. The book makes maximum use of colour illustration, to which the subject particularly lends itself. The author took about 2000 colour slides in the course of his extensive field work, and over 550 of the best of these feature prominently in the book.