Author(s): John Dawson, Rob Lucas et al

Trees | Aotearoa

A complete revision, of the best selling, award-winning landmark book on New Zealand’s native trees.   New Zealand’s Native Trees is a landmark book, the kind that is published only once in a generation.  It celebrates our unique and magnificent native forests, and describes and generously illustrates more than 320 species, subspecies and varieties.  This edition has been completely brought up-to-date with a significant number of botanical revisions, as many new species have been described or reclassified in the years since the book was first published in 2011. It is organised in three main parts: conifers, tree ferns and flowering trees. After authoritative introductions to each part, genera are covered in alphabetical order. The botanical features of each species are then described in detail, along with its distribution, habitat and key relationships with other plants and animals.

More than 3200 superb photographs illustrate fascinating close details of flowers, fruits and other features, and show the form of specimen trees, while wider views of habitats place the species in context. Clear-cut illustrations of leaves are included for each species, arranged in plates for easy identification of larger groups.

New Zealand’s Native Trees, by respected author–photographer team John Dawson and Rob Lucas, with the collaboration of several of New Zealand’s leading botanists, is a wonderful contribution to the documentation and understanding of the richness and diversity of New Zealand’s native trees and forests. Valuable as an identification guide, a reference, a resource for landscapers and gardeners, and an inspiration for a new generation of New Zealanders, this is an essential book for every home, school and library.

Author Informtion:

DR JOHN DAWSON (1928–2019) was Associate Professor of Botany at Victoria University until his retirement in 1988. John devoted much of the last 30 years to research, writing botanical papers and books, and enthusiastically sharing his botanical knowledge through public outreach. John ran many adult education courses on New Zealand native plants and, until his recent illness, guided countless groups around Otari Native Botanic Garden in Wellington. He was passionate about the New Zealand flora, especially Metrosideros, the Apiaceae genera, and the native vascular plant species of trees, climbers and epiphytes and their biogeography and ecology. John was the author of many scholarly papers on aspects of the New Zealand flora, and authored several books, including Forest Vines to Snow Tussocks: The story of New Zealand plants (1988) and Seasons in the Forest (with photographs by Brian Enting, 1990). John also undertook research in New Caledonia on Myrtaceae, its largest family, and in two substantial papers he formally described about a quarter of the c. 250 species there. John’s work in botany has been widely recognised. He was a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London (FLS), and in 2016 he was awarded Landcare Research’s Allan Mere, a prestigious award to botanists who have made an outstanding contribution to New Zealand botany.

Rob Lucas lectured in horticulture at The Open Polytechnic of New Zealand until his retirement in 2006. He has been photographing plants for several decades, and his photographs have been widely published. He is the author of Managing Pests and Diseases: A handbook for New Zealand gardeners and co-author (with Isobel Gabites) of The Native Garden: Design themes from wild New Zealand. He lives in Wellington.

John Dawson and Rob Lucas are co-authors of the award-winning Nature Guide to the New Zealand Forest (2000), Lifestyles of New Zealand Forest Plants (1993), Lifestyles of New Zealand Coast and Mountain Plants (1996) and the Nature of Plants: Habitats, challenges and adaptations (2005).