Thread: Timber ID guides.

IMHO I reckon Keith Bootle book "Wood in Australia" is the best of all.

Comprehensive list of species.
Very good individual species description.
Covers ALL of Australia, not just the East Coast species.
Heaps of relevant information on timber etc.

Most books include USA & UK species.
Most Australian books only cover the East Coast species.

HTH
Col

A few other titles to consider for western Qld:

Jenny Milson: Trees and shrubs of north western Qld. (an excellent field guide)

Jenny Milson: Pasture Plants of of north western Qld.

and this Santos piece is electronic if you can find it to inspect. Better suited to the brigalow and channel country.
Santos Field Guide to Trees and Shrubs of Eastern QLD Oil and gas field

Nice to see your interest in delving deeper into the western Qld flora. RM

Bootle... Wood in Australia. I've got both editions, the older carries more rainforest species, the second covers the "newer" import species better.

Boland.. forest trees of Australia: probably the best reference guide to commonly occurring eucalypt species ever printed.

Simmons... Acacias of Australia: exquisitely drawn plates make it an invaluable reference tool for the identification of Acacia spp.

Francis and Chippendale: Australian rainforest trees, including notes on tropical species

Keating and Bolza: characteristics properties and uses of timber vol1, S.E. Asia, northern Australia and the pacific

Bolza: properties and uses of 175 timbers from Papua and west irian


im trying to lay hands on Lake: Australian rainforest woods. Characteristics, uses and indentification.... Santa brings me things like that and maybe I'm im a good boy I'll get a copy.


the Boland and the Simmons books would be the ones to have for field ID outside the rainforest in the country you travel, and if I only had to have one it'd be Boland. CSIRO publishing have it in print... Not cheap but worth every cent and then some!!!

Originally Posted by John.G

......im trying to lay hands on Lake: Australian rainforest woods. Characteristics, uses and indentification.... Santa brings me things like that and maybe I'm im a good boy I'll get a copy....

I have it, & it's certainly useful, but it's hardly a field-guide! For a field-guide, you need very clear pictures of identifying features (& drawings are often clearer than photos), such as flowers & fruits. The pictures of trees are next to useless, about all they show is a tree, and in many pics, it's hard to see which is the actual tree being photographed, let alone make out any identifying details. For my chronologically-challenged eyes, many of the photos of leaves or fruits are too small, too blurry, and the backgrounds are too busy to make out anything clearly. I don't want to sound mean-spirited, because I know what a huge amount of work must have gone into a book like this, but apart from a good picture editor, the author could have done with a decent proof-reader - there are far too many typos in the text!

There is still a lot of useful info for woodworkers (the lists of common-names given to many species is extremely handy!), & all in all, I'm pleased to be able to add it to my library. The macro pics of end-grain for the various woods are a great resource if you are able to use them - could save a lot of the "what wood is this?" posts, if people are prepared to try & id their wood "properly"....

Cheers,

W.D Francis 'Rainforest Trees of Australia' is worth getting just for the old photos
Some great examples illustrated and some good info throughout
Was my wood 'bible' for years...MM

Thanks guys I have a couple of those books, unfortunately my field days have ended, but the interest is still there.

One I found to be helpful was "Around Mt Isa - Flora Guide" by Helen Horton, region specific but useful.

One source for hard to find books is

Andrew Isles Natural History Books
Rear of 115-117 Greville Street
(PO Box 2305)
Prahran 3181 Melbourne Australia

www.AndrewIsles.com
Phone [61] (03) 9510 5750
Fax [61] (03) 9529 1256
Email: [email protected]