Plant Habits And Habitats In The Arid Portions Of South Australia PDF Download

Excerpt from Plant Habits and Habitats in the Arid Portions of South Australia The physical background of the Australian plants is in a measure unique. The dry region is very extensive. Some idea of its size can be had by the statement that it has nearly as great an area as all Arabia, and as a matter of fact is larger than all other regions of the kind south of the equator. Living and developing under an environment of which the keynote is aridity, the flora of the continent as a Whole bears a xerophytic stamp and appears to possess a degree of uniformity which constitutes one of its most marked characteristics. Wherever one goes in Australia, he encounters trees and shrubs with leathery, ever green leaves. In the better-watered portions the trees are large and numerous and there is an extensive transpiration surface, but in portions less favored in this particular the trees are not large, a shrubby type of vegetation prevails, and the transpiration surface is also much restricted in area. Between the two extremes there are innumerable intermediate conditions in which the gradations are quantitative rather than qualitative. When studied in some detail, however, there may be found a bewildering variety of adjustments to the environment, often monotonous perhaps in outward appearance, and which have in a measure the force of belying the generalization just made. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.