Pests Diseases & Ailments of Australian Plants
Botany Australian Flora Horticulture Ecology Organic Gardening Plant Pathology Field Reference
Pests Diseases & Ailments of Australian Plants is the 1990 field-reference that serious gardeners, bush-regenerators and TAFE horticulture students still reach for first. Written by two of Australia’s most respected botanists, W. Rodger Elliot and David L. Jones, the 334-page paperback distils decades of field experience into one compact 240 mm volume that fits a backpack or nursery bench. Every ailment—whether it’s phytophthora in native banksias, scale on eucalypts or the latest fungal threats to rainforest frangipani—is matched with clear symptom photos, diagnostic notes and organic or low-toxic control options that protect both the plant and the surrounding ecosystem. No other Australian reference of this era covers such a broad host list: more than 1,000 indigenous species from every climatic zone.
What makes this copy especially collectable is its condition. Stored in a smoke-free home and kept free of handwriting, dog-ears or shelf-cock, it presents as a crisp working reference rather than a tired ex-library discard. The 1990 first-printing ISBN 9780850912098 is now long out of print with Hachette Australia; clean copies are increasingly scarce in the second-hand market, driving demand among landscape designers who need the original cross-referencing tables and updated chemical safety data that later reprints quietly omitted.
Beyond pure identification, Elliot and Jones explain why Australian plants succumb to pests in the first place—linking soil mycorrhizal health, fire regimes and even phosphorus sensitivity to disease outbreaks—so readers learn preventative ecology, not just reactive spraying. Whether you are restoring a coastal heath, managing a Sydney bush garden or curating a native plant nursery, this single handbook replaces a shelf of regional pamphlets and keeps your remediation practices both safe and scientifically current.
Refer to our eBay listing for a full condition report and many more high-quality pictures of this item.
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