Owner's signature inside front cover; sl. abrasion to covers, otherwise v.g. A most impressive regional monograph by a young American botanist who went on to become Director of Missouri Botanic Garden and an adviser to President Clinton. Probably the only floristic work to contain a map of a balloon tracked around eight circuits of the southern hemisphere (fig. 26). He poses the question, why should there be so many species of Epilobium in New Zealand? The answer lies in the Pleistocene, when plant migrations caused by the Ice Ages caused mixing of populations, hybridisation and subsequent selection of plants adapted to different microhabitats. Includes keys, descriptions, dot distribution maps, citation of specimens, and some very attractive text figures illustrating critical features as well as a few rather less successful colour plates of whole plants and dissections. The term 'Australasia' is applied rather loosely, to include plants of New Guinea as well as Australia and New Zealand.