A celebration of the exceptionally rich, yet threatened, flora of this, the largest island in the Greek archipelago. Crete's enchanting landscapes range from rugged mountains to desert-like areas, coastal plains and ancient olive groves. Its extraordinary geological and climatic history has resulted in great plant diversity, with prehistoric links to Europe, Asia, and North Africa. The authors and editor, united by their love of the island's flora, have produced a sumptuous and authoritative book, covering over 800 plant species, and with more than 1900 stunning colour photographs.
"Crete, Karpathos and the nearby Islands in the South Aegean region have a rich and varied flora with approximately 1750 species, including a significant proportion of endemics. This checklist is the first work to provide, in a single volume, detailed information on all these vascular plants. In addition, and also for the first time, most of the taxa ae mapped."--Publisher description
This is the first book to help the visitor understand Crete's remarkable landscape, which is just as spectacular as the island's rich archaeological heritage. Crete is a wonderful and dramatic island, a miniature continent with precipitous mountains, a hundred gorges, unique plants, extinct animals and lost civilisations, as well as the characteristic agricultural landscape of olive groves, vines and goats, Jennifer Moody and Oliver Rackham explain how the island's peculiar and extraordinary features, moulded and modified by centuries of human activity, have come together to create the landscape we see today. They also explain the formation and ecology of Crete's beautiful mountains and coastline, and the contemporary threats to the island's fragile natural beauty.
The Cretan Way is a 500 km walking route which takes you from east to west across the varied and spectacular landscapes of Crete. It is the ideal way to discover the rural, mountainous and coastal regions of this incredible island. The Cretan Way is the first ever guidebook for a long-distance hike in Crete and includes maps, descriptions, a travelogue, GPS tracks, accommodation info and tips for walking one of the most remarkable routes in the world.
The flora of the Mediterranean islands includes many rare and localized species unique to the islands. Some of these are particularly threatened with extinction due to various pressures caused by people and their activities in Mediterranean ecosystems. It includes 50 descriptive sheets of species which are especially threatened, based on the IUCN Red List criteria. Each sheet gives a description of the species with illustrations and maps, emphasizing the threats to the species, existing conservation measures and additional measures needed for their conservation. Aimed at the layman, the text is easily accessible to the non-botanist.
This is one of the first four in a new series of fabulously illustrated natural history travel guides, intended for the general reader with an interest in natural history, and for the growing numbers of 'ecotourists' who want to know where to see wildlife in the countries they visit. Thebooks are designed to complement each other and to build into a nature library, together giving an introduction to the natural history of Europe.Greece is a wonderfully varied and exciting country, with unspoilt scenery, from hot, barren, sun-baked rocky wastes to snow-capped mountains, forests, abundant natural lakes, many of the deepest gorges in Europe, and vast areas of saltmarsh and coastal lagoons, all relatively undiscovered. Itsclimate makes it an ideal place to visit in spring and autumn. For the naturalist, it is a rewarding country to visit, with much to see at every season, and something new around every corner.Essentially practical, the book first introduces the ecology, geology, and wildlife of Greece, then goes on to describe where to see its natural history at its best. There are descriptions of a selection of some 200 sites to visit, each carefully chosen to show a range of habitats and fascinatingwildlife. The entries are the personal choice of the author and are based on intensive travel and research in the region. Described sites range in size from a few to thousands of hectares, be they National Parks, nature reserves, or simply common land, but all are open to the public and accessibleto the ordinary visitor. Four colour throughout, this book has stunning landscape photographs, line drawings and photographs of individual animals of plants and animals, colour region and site maps, and a splendid composite painting encapsulating typical habitats and their inhabitants.
