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The maritime European exploration of Australia consisted of several waves of European seafarers who sailed the edges of the Australian continent. Dutch navigators were the first Europeans known to have explored and mapped the Australian coastline. The first documented encounter was that of Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon, in 1606. Dutch seafarers also visited the west and north coasts of the continent, as did French explorers.
Robert Brown was a Scottish botanist and paleobotanist who made important contributions to botany largely through his pioneering use of the microscope. His contributions include one of the earliest detailed descriptions of the cell nucleus and cytoplasmic streaming; the observation of Brownian motion; early work on plant pollination and fertilisation, including being the first to recognise the fundamental difference between gymnosperms and angiosperms; and some of the earliest studies in palynology. He also made numerous contributions to plant taxonomy, notably erecting a number of plant families that are still accepted today; and numerous Australian plant genera and species, the fruit of his exploration of that continent with Matthew Flinders.
Callistemon is a genus of shrubs in the family Myrtaceae, first described as a genus in 1814. The entire genus is endemic to Australia but widely cultivated in many other regions and naturalised in scattered locations. Their status as a separate taxon is in doubt, some authorities accepting that the difference between callistemons and melaleucas is not sufficient for them to be grouped in a separate genus.
Ferdinand Lucas Bauer was an Austrian botanical illustrator who travelled on Matthew Flinders' expedition to Australia.
New Holland is a historical European name for mainland Australia.
Kingia is a genus consisting of a single species, Kingia australis, and belongs to the plant family Dasypogonaceae. The Aboriginal name bullanock is used as a common name for the plant. It has a thick pseudo-trunk consisting of accumulated leaf-bases, with a cluster of long, slender leaves on top. The trunk is usually unbranched, but can branch if the growing tip is damaged. Flowers occur in egg-shaped clusters on the ends of up to 100 long curved stems. Kingia grows extremely slowly, the trunk increasing in height by about 1½ centimetres per year. It can live for centuries, however, so can attain a substantial height; 400-year-old plants with a height of six metres are not unusual.
Pittosporaceae is a family of flowering plants that consists of 200–240 species of trees, shrubs, and lianas in 9 genera. Habitats range from tropical to temperate climates of the Afrotropical, Indomalayan, Oceanian, and Australasian realms. The type genus is Pittosporum Banks ex Gaertn.
Professor David John Mabberley, is a British-born botanist, educator and writer. Among his varied scientific interests is the taxonomy of tropical plants, especially trees of the families Labiatae, Meliaceae and Rutaceae. He is perhaps best known for his plant dictionary The plant-book. A portable dictionary of the vascular plants. The third edition was published in 2008 as Mabberley's Plant-book, for which he was awarded the Engler Medal in Silver in 2009. As of June 2017 Mabberley's Plant-book is in its fourth edition.
Flora of Australia is a 59 volume series describing the vascular plants, bryophytes and lichens present in Australia and its external territories. The series is published by the Australian Biological Resources Study who estimate that the series when complete will describe over 20 000 plant species. It was orchestrated by Alison McCusker.
Brunonia australis, commonly known as the blue pincushion or native cornflower, is a perennial or annual herb that grows widely across Australia. It is found in woodlands, open forest and sand plains. In Cronquist's classification scheme it was the sole member of the monogeneric plant family Brunoniaceae. The APG II system moved it into Goodeniaceae, with which it shares the stylar pollen-cup, or indusium, a character confined to these taxa. Brunonia is unique among Goodeniaceae in its radially symmetric flowers, the superior ovary and the absence of endosperm in the seeds.
Captain Matthew Flinders was a British navigator and cartographer who led the first inshore circumnavigation of mainland Australia, then called New Holland. He is also credited as being the first person to utilise the name Australia to describe the entirety of that continent including Van Diemen's Land, a title he regarded as being "more agreeable to the ear" than previous names such as Terra Australis.
The name Australia is derived from the Latin australis, meaning "southern", and specifically from the hypothetical Terra Australis postulated in pre-modern geography. The name was popularised by the explorer Matthew Flinders from 1804, and it has been in official use since 1817, replacing "New Holland," an English translation of the Dutch name, first given by Abel Tasman in 1643 as the name for the continent.
On the natural order of plants called Proteaceae, also published as "On the Proteaceae of Jussieu", was a paper written by Robert Brown on the taxonomy of the plant family Proteaceae. It was read to the Linnean Society of London in the first quarter of 1809, and published in March 1810. It is significant for its contribution to the systematics of Proteaceae, and to the floristics of Australia, and also for its application of palynology to systematics.
A Voyage to Terra Australis: Undertaken for the Purpose of Completing the Discovery of that Vast Country, and Prosecuted in the Years 1801, 1802, and 1803, in His Majesty's Ship the Investigator was a sea voyage journal written by English mariner and explorer Matthew Flinders. It describes his circumnavigation of the Australian continent in the early years of the 19th century, and his imprisonment by the French on the island of Mauritius from 1804–1810.
Novae Hollandiae Plantarum Specimen is a two-volume work describing the flora of Australia. Facsimiles of the originals can be found in the online Biodiversity Heritage Library (Vol.1) and Vol 2).
Character and description of Kingia, a new genus of plants found on the south-west coast of New Holland, with observations on the structure of its unimpregnated ovulum, and on the female flower of Cycadeae and Coniferae is an 1826 paper by botanist Robert Brown. Though nominally a formal description of the then-unpublished genus Kingia, it is more notable for its digressions into ovule anatomy and development, in which Brown sets out for the first time the modern understanding of the structure of angiosperm ovules, and publishes the first description of the fundamental difference between angiosperms and gymnosperms. Of the latter it has been said that "no more important discovery was ever made in the domain of comparative morphology and systematic Botany".
Flindersia australis, commonly known as crow's ash, flindosy or Australian teak, is a species of tree that is endemic to north-eastern Australia. It has pinnate leaves with between five and thirteen egg-shaped to elliptical leaflets, white to cream-coloured flowers arranged in panicles on the ends of branchlets and followed by woody capsules studded with short, rough points and containing winged seeds.
Observations, systematical and geographical, on the herbarium collected by Professor Christian Smith, in the vicinity of the Congo, during the expedition to explore that river, under the command of Captain Tuckey, in the year 1816, also published as Observations, systematical and geographical, on Professor Christian Smith's collection of plants from the vicinity of the River Congo, is an 1818 paper written by Robert Brown on the botany of tropical Africa. It is significant for its contributions to plant systematics, and to African floristics and phytogeography.
General view of the botany of the vicinity of Swan River is an 1831 scientific paper by Scottish botanist Robert Brown. It discusses the vegetation of the Swan River Colony, and comments on its affinities with other regions. It has been described as "an essential step taken in our knowledge of the boundaries of the SW province".
Synaphea spinulosa is a species of small shrub in the flowering plant family Proteaceae. It is endemic to Western Australia. Together with Acacia truncata, it was the first Australian endemic to be scientifically described and named, and the specimen upon which that description is based is the oldest extant specimen of an Australian plant, and very likely among the first Australian plant specimens ever collected.
References
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Mabberley, David (1985). Jupiter botanicus: Robert Brown of the British Museum. British Museum (Natural History). ISBN 3-7682-1408-7.
- 1 2 3 4 J. J. Bennett, ed. (1866–68). "General remarks, geographical and systematical, on the botany of Terra Australis". The Miscellaneous Botanical Works of Robert Brown, Esq., D.C.L., F.R.S. Vol. 2. pp. 1–89.
- ↑ Mabberley (1985), quoting Hooker, Joseph Dalton (1890). "Eulogium on Robert Brown". Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London. 1887–88: 54–67.