ANNOUNCE: New book on W. Australian Flora

[Alex R. Chapman]

The following is a notification of the publication of a new book on the Western Australian flora, with an additional brief background note on some of the underlying IT.


THE WESTERN AUSTRALIAN FLORA - A DESCRIPTIVE CATALOGUE was launched on the 5th October 2000.
Published jointly by the Wildflower Society of Western Australia, Western Australian Herbarium, CALM and the Botanic Gardens and Parks Authority, the 672 pages include 16 pages of colour and 6 colour plates with an Introduction covering botanical history, floristics, classification and data management.

This publication catalogues the diversity of the vascular flora occurring in Western Australia. The State contains about 3% of the world's flora with several areas of special interest. Endemism is extremely high in the south-west with nearly 80% of the taxa growing nowhere else in the world.

Every native and naturalised alien plant known to occur in the State is listed by family, genus and species and accompanied by a brief description of its habit, height, flowering time and colour, habitat and distribution.

Subspecies and varieties are included, as are new entities scientifically recognised but yet to be formally described. In total, this document describes 11,922 vascular plant taxa, as recorded in the information systems of the WA Herbarium on the 20th January 2000.

Some 2,000 taxa throughout the State are considered rare, threatened or of uncertain conservation status. By documenting fundamental information on all the State's flora this book aims to encourage community interest and input into conserving the Western Australian flora.

For those involved in the management of biodiversity information systems, the descriptive data in this publication was captured and maintained using the DELTA standard and various software tools including CONFOR and INTKEY.  For more info on the DEscription LAnguage for TAxonomy see  http://www.biodiversity.uno.edu/delta/ .

The information was output from DELTA into both the book format, and onto the FloraBase web site where it forms the standard descriptive element alongside maps, images, nomenclatural and specimen data on every vascular plant in WA.  Interactive identification using this data is also enabled.

FloraBase has been developed by the WA Herbarium, CALM as the primary and authoritative information source on the flora of Western Australia. This database-driven site integrates some 12,000 descriptions, 11,500 distribution maps, 17,000 names records, 1,700 taxon images and nearly 500,000 specimen records.  See http://florabase.calm.wa.gov.au/ for more info.

Copies of the book can be ordered online at: http://florabase.calm.wa.gov.au/catalogue.html . A small number of hard cover copies are also available for libraries etc. Note that all email enquiries about the book go to: wildflowers at ozemail.com.au .

____
Alex R. Chapman                   Email: alexc at calm.wa.gov.au
Research Scientist          Voice/Fax: +61 8 9334 0513 / 0515
WA Herbarium - Department of Conservation and Land Management
Locked Bag 104 Bentley Delivery Centre Western Australia 6983