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A seven-year project to catalogue all flora in Western Australia culminated at Kings Park today.
A seven-year project to catalogue all flora in Western Australia culminated at Kings Park today.
Every species known to exist is captured and detailed in The Western
Australian Flora - A Descriptive Catalogue, which was launched by
Environment Minister Cheryl Edwardes.
The catalogue gives an
overview of Western Australia's botanical history and lists flowering
months, flower colour and distribution of 11,922 ferns and flowering
plant species recorded from the State's deserts, tropics, sandplains
and native forests. It lists alien plants as well as natives.
It was jointly published by the Department of Conservation and Land
Management's WA Herbarium, the Wildflower Society of Western Australia
(Inc) and the Botanic Gardens and Parks Authority.
Staff at the herbarium provided managerial, computing and technical support.
"It is the most authoritative botanical publication of our State's
flora in 30 years and will undoubtedly become a botanical bible," Mrs
Edwardes said.
"The last similar book was published in 1970.
Nearly 12,000 new and previously known plants are recorded and briefly
described in the new catalogue."
Since 1993, the project has
received $161,000 from the Lotteries Commission's Gordon Reid
Foundation for Conservation. The money was one of the largest amounts
donated by the foundation to a single project.
Mrs Edwardes
said more than half Australia's flora grew in WA and of that, 80 per
cent was found in the South-West. But one fifth was considered rare,
threatened or had an uncertain conservation status.
"Many of these species are well recognised by conservation scientists but haven't been formally named," she said.
"All species known to exist in WA are now officially named. That alone
means this book's a key tool for botanists, conservationists,
researchers and the scientific community."
Authors Grazyna
Paczkowska, a botanical consultant, and Alex Chapman, a botanist and
research scientist at the WA Herbarium, used the Kensington herbarium's
500,000 preserved flora specimens dating back to 1801 - when pioneer
botanist Robert Brown collected plant specimens near Albany - to
produce the book.
The Wildflower Society provided extra funding for the book's design and publication.
"This volume is timely, broad and thorough," Mrs Edwardes said.
"It's the product of productive collaboration between the Wildflower
Society, the WA Herbarium and the Botanic Gardens and Parks Authority."
Media contacts: Steve Manchee (Minister's Office) 9421 7777; Alex Chapman (CALM) 9334 0506 |
