Handbooks of the flora of Papua New Guinea.

Abstract

The New Guinea mainland and surrounding islands possess an extra-ordinarily rich flora and a great diversity of vegetation types that parallel the diverse physiography of the lands and the resulting climates that prevail. A high proportion (some three-quarters) of the land area has a forest cover, most of it evergreen rain forest. Seasonally dry areas support distinctive and characteristic vegetations. The large rivers have extensive flood-plains that are inundated seasonally, and, where drainage is impeded for long periods, vast swamplands occur. Above the treeline on the highest mountains com- munities of dwarfed herbs extend to the wind-battered and occasionally snow-covered peaks.