Volume 43: Sloover, R. Jacques de and A.L. Jacquemart: Nymph Island (Great Barrier Reef, Queensland, Australia). Flora and vegetation of a low wooded island. 2008. figs. col. photogr. 88 p. gr8vo. Paper bd.

Nymph island is an inner-shelf coral island of the northern section of the Great Barrier Reef off Cooktown. Its flora ranks among the richest of the coral islands in spite of its limited area. This book gives a checklist of the 143 vascular plants belonging to 63 families, as well as a detailed description and analysis of its vegetation. Among the recognized units are salty grassland communities, six mangal communities, scrubby vine herb fields, a pioneering upper beach herbfield, Casuarina woodland and Manikara broadleaf forest. Sandy soils are comparatively young. They were mainly studied under forest communities assuming that on progressively older terraces maturation leads to hemi-organic layers. Mapping the vegetation units shows the extent to which earlier maps were inaccurate, unquestionably so with regard to plant communities and geomorphological features. A new hypothesis about island structure and progressive setting up is thus suggested.