New Flora of the British Isles

About this book

This is the 2024 (third) reprint of the fourth edition.

Since its first publication in 1991, New Flora of the British Isles has become established as the standard work on the identification of the wild flowering plants, ferns and conifers of the British Isles. The Flora remains unique in many features, including its full coverage of all our wild plants in one volume, its user-friendly organisation, its line drawings and photographs of critical features, and its specially compiled keys and descriptions. All native, naturalised, crop and repeatedly occurring casual plants are included. The fourth edition is stitch-bound with a flexible plastic cover, ensuring durability and utility in the field.

In the nine years since the appearance of the Third Edition, many new data and ideas relating to our wild flora have become available. More than 200 species and hybrids (including 5 newly discovered native species and one neonative) have been added to the text of this fourth edition but, in order to establish it as a truly Twenty-first Century Flora, alien species that have not been recorded in the British Isles since 1999 are omitted from the main text, although those newly omitted in this edition (about 90 taxa) are retained in the keys.

The third edition (2010) was the first British Flora to incorporate the new molecular system of classification based primarily on DNA sequences, a scheme that is expected to endure for centuries to come at the family level. However, new discoveries from this research are continually being made, necessitating numerous further changes at lower, particularly the genus, levels. These have been incorporated but, where the evidence is in any way equivocal, the status quo has been retained pending the arrival of better data. Caution is preferable to changes that have to be reversed later. Apart from this, innumerable adjustments have been made to the descriptions and keys, the distributions (especially of hybrids) have been updated, and the categories used to summarise native/alien status have been altered in line with modern thinking.

These revisions should ensure that this Fourth Edition remains the essential reference source for all taxonomists, ecologists, conservationists, landscape planners, plant hunters and biogeographers, whether they be researchers, teachers, students, professionals or amateurs.

Contents

Preface to Fourth Edition    vii
Preface to First Edition    ix
General Acknowledgements    x

Introduction    xi
      Taxonomic Scope    xi
      Geographical Scope    xii
      Status and Distribution    xiii
      Classification    xiii
      Nomenclature    xiv
      Descriptions    xv
      Identification Keys    xvi
      Illustrations    xvii
      Conservation and Rarity    xviii
Bibliography    xxi
Synopsis Of Families    xxiv
How to Use This Book (Black-edged)    xxix
Signs and Abbreviations    xxx

The Flora    1
Pteridophytes (Ferns & Fern-allies)    1
    Lycophytes (Clubmosses & Quillworts)    5
    Eusporangiate Ferns (Adder's-tongues & Moonworts)    10
    Calamophytes (Horsetails)    12
    Leptosporangiate Ferns (True Ferns)    16
Gymnosperms (Conifers) (Black-edged)    43
Angiosperms (Flowering Plants) (Black-edged)    62
    Pre-dicots (Primitive Angiosperms)    85
    Eu-dicots (True Dicotyledons)    91
    Monocots (Monocotyledons)    872

Glossary (Black-edged)    1123
Index    1141

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Biography

Clive Anthony Stace BSc, PhD, DSc graduated from the University of London in 1959 and gained his doctorate at the Natural History Museum London in 1963. For the next 41 years he carried out research and teaching in the Universities of Manchester and Leicester, where he is now Emeritus Professor of Plant Taxonomy. His research mainly involved the taxonomy, biosystematics and cytogenetics of western European flowering plants. He has been a keen field botanist for over 60 years, and field-work was an important part of both his research and teaching programmes. He was President of the Botanical Society of the British Isles 1987-89. He has produced about 200 scientific papers and books, including Hybridization and the Flora of the British Isles (1975), Plant Taxonomy and Biosystematics (1980, 1989) and Interactive Flora of the British Isles (2004). He was elected Honorary Fellow of the Linnean Society in 2004.