Flora Tasmaniae

Flora Tasmaniae
AuthorJoseph Dalton Hooker
IllustratorWalter Hood Fitch
LanguageEnglish
SeriesMonthly parts
SubjectBotany
PublisherReeve Brothers
Publication date
1853 – 1859
Publication placeEngland

The Flora Tasmaniae is a description of the plants discovered in Tasmania during the Ross expedition written by Joseph Dalton Hooker and published by Reeve Brothers in London between 1855 and 1860.[1] Hooker sailed on HMS Erebus as assistant surgeon.[2] Written in two volumes, it was the last in a series of four Floras in the Flora Antarctica, the others being the Botany of Lord Auckland's Group and Campbell's Island (1843–1845), the Botany of Fuegia, the Falklands, Kerguelen's Land, Etc. (1845–47), and the Flora Novae-Zelandiae (1851–1853). They were "splendidly" illustrated by Walter Hood Fitch.[3]

The larger part of the plant specimens collected during the Ross expedition are now part of the Kew Herbarium.[4]

Although Hooker professed not to have changed his views on Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, the book contains an introductory essay on biogeography written from a Darwinian point of view, making the book the first case study for the theory.

  1. ^ Joseph Dalton Hooker (1844). Flora Antarctica, Volume 1, Parts 1-2, Flora Novae-Zelandiae - The Botany of the Antarctic Voyage of H.M. Discovery Ships Erebus and Terror in the years 1839-1843. London: Reeve Brothers. pp. title pages.
  2. ^ "The Erebus voyage". Kew Royal Botanic Gardens. Archived from the original on 2015-11-23. Retrieved 2015-11-28.
  3. ^ Curtis, Winifred M. (1972). "Hooker, Sir Joseph Dalton (1817-1911)". Australian Dictionary of Biography. Vol. 4. Canberra: National Centre of Biography, Australian National University. ISBN 978-0-522-84459-7. ISSN 1833-7538. OCLC 70677943.
  4. ^ David Goyder; Pat Griggs; Mark Nesbitt; Lynn Parker; Kiri Ross-Jones (2012). "Sir Joseph Hooker's Collections at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew" (PDF). Curtis's Botanical Magazine. 29 (1): 66–85. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8748.2012.01772.x. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2015-06-08. Retrieved 2016-02-29.