The Lycopods and Ferns of the Drakensberg and Lesotho
These remarkable plants offer windows into ancient botanical history, making
this essential reading for anyone interested in understanding the evolutionary
journey from primitive plant forms to today’s dominant flowering flora.
The Lycopods and Ferns of the Drakensberg and Lesotho explores the
fascinating flora of southern Africa’s highest and most mountainous region.
This spectacular World Heritage Site is renowned for its flowering plant
diversity, but possesses an equally remarkable collection of ferns and lycopods
with rich evolutionary history and fossil records.
This comprehensive account covers all 117 native and naturalised lycopod and
fern species occurring in Lesotho and the Drakensberg region. Introductory
chapters provide insights into ecology, structure and classification of living
species and their extinct relatives, enhanced by recent molecular advances
that illuminate these groups’ evolutionary relationships to modern flowering
plants.
Detailed descriptions, distribution maps and full-colour illustrations support
species identification, whilst close-up photographs of spores and frond details
aid critical recognition. Written by a world authority, the book reveals how
ferns and lycopods represent surviving fragments of a formerly rich and exotic
plant world that remains largely unknown to naturalists and botanists.
Additional information
| ISBN | 9781920146108 |
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