STH EAST QLD - Glenn Leiper was chasing a photo of a Bolly Gum in flower for 30 years.

The gum, botanically known as Litsea reticulata, is not uncommon.

“You’ll often see it’s flowers fallen on the ground in the rainforest,” Mr Leiper said.

“But that’s no good to me.”

To make the book that is Mr Leiper’s life work, he needed to photograph the flowers, branches and leaves all together.

And that’s not the only floral quest upon which the former principal has embarked since buying a bare block in Beenleigh 42 years ago.

Of the roughly 2500 plant species photographed and identified in the latest edition of Mangroves to Mountains: A Field Guide To The Native Plants Of South East Queensland, Mr Leiper reckoned he snapped about 2,400.

Each plant has a story to tell, many requiring long hikes to track down and years of detective work to capture at just the right time.

Some, like the coastal heath of the Sunshine Coast, burst into a spectacular carpet of flowers “like clockwork” every August.

Other plants might only flower every 10 years high in the canopy of a secluded forest, though no one can say for sure when and where that might occur.

But while he may be the driving force behind the field guide, this was no solo effort.

Mr Leiper credits a community of fellow “plant nerds” in and around Boonah as a driving force behind the book’s updated second edition, which was released this month.

But if that conjures images of khaki clad eccentrics in pith helmets or long haired alternative lifestylers, think again.

Mr Leiper said that many of the people who tell him about plants which didn’t make previous editions are farmers with an intimate knowledge of their land.

Like cousins Deb and Errol Stenzel, who live at Coochin and Bunburra.

“One of the reasons I had to update it was because Deb and Errol kept finding species I didn’t have in the book,” he said.

“They’ve got a very discerning eye for native plants.

“They graze cattle, and when they are moving around their properties on their vehicles they’re spotting what’s happening on their property in regard to flowering plants.”

 Mr Leiper said he often gets emails from the Stenzels with photos of interesting finds.

Among them, the Slender Monkey Flower (Mimulus gracilis), Creeping Cassia (Chamaecrista concinna) as well as pea flowers that pop up between the grasses and amid the trees on their farms.

Some were thought to have been lost to the region but are quietly flourishing in pockets of private land.

“That's a ringing endorsement for the management of some of these properties,” Mr Leiper said.

Among the other amatuer botanists to trigger the updated guide was Boonah’s Aub Podlich.

“Aub goes bushwalking and finds all sorts of interesting plants,” Mr Leiper said.

“We had to add a whole lot of species that Aub found.”

Among them, two species of Glinus, including the Hairy Carpet Weed, growing along the banks of Lake Wyaralong.

Despite their “terrible” common names, Mr Leiper said they could put on quite a show.

“They're in the sun and they get a bit stressed as they dry out as the water recedes,” Mr Leiper said.

“Through dehydration, the plants turn all sorts of colours like reds and purples and oranges.

“They are glorious things, big circular mats on the edge of the dam.”

It is this network of amateur enthusiasts who keep driving updates to the field guide which first came out in 2002 and has sold around 25,000 copies.

But also, the changes the professionals make to botanical names of the species they hunt.

Like the Orange Spade Flower, a flowering plant around the Scenic Rim and Ipswich areas which has been through several name changes and is now known as Pigea stellarioides to scientists.

With constant name changes, plants being found for the first time in the area and entirely new species being discovered, Mangroves to Mountains’ ambitious task of documenting every plant south of Fraser Island, east of Toowoomba and down to the border may never be entirely complete.       

But it has already made a Herculean attempt at that task.

Mr Leiper said there are about 3,000 plant species in the area, more than 2,500 of which are now included in the guide.

“We have all the trees, the wattles, the gums, every single rainforest species,” he said.

“It’s really hard to identify all the native grasses and sedges and some of the ferns, so we don’t have a comprehensive coverage of those.”

“We thought we had all the orchids but two or three escaped our attention.

“But we’ll attend to that in time.”

Which means at 66, Mr Leiper will still have plenty of reason to get out into the bush and keep up his quest.

And he has a “hit list” which will tide him over until the next reprint.

Like a little Lindernia, which only grows on the banks of two lakes in the Sunshine Coast.

“There’s a lot of very keen botanists in the district, both professional and amateur,  who are always out there, always looking, always finding and always photographing.”