Plants

Western Australia is renowned for its unique plants, algae and fungi, from the forests of our south-west to the vast meadows of seagrass offshore, and the boab trees of the Kimberley.

The south-west of Western Australia is one of the world's 34 biodiversity ‘hotspots’, with some of the richest and most unique reservoirs of plant and animal life on earth.

There are about 13,000 species of plants in Western Australia, of which 3,000 are yet to be formally named. 

Parks and Wildlife has a key role in protecting our native plants through the management of lands and waters reserved under the Conservation and Land Management Act, a range of conservation initiatives operating on other lands, and the protection of threatened species and ecological communities.

• FloraBase is a database of Western Australian plants.
  You can search by several categories, including scientific and common names, as well as by descriptions such as flower colour, habitat and locality. 

• The Western Australian Herbarium houses the State's collection of scientific plant specimens, and is responsible for describing and documenting the diversity of the state's plants, algae and fungi. It manages FloraBase, and provides most of its core data through its collection of more than 750,000 specimens. 

   All native plants are protected in Western Australia by law.

You need a licence to take part or all of any native plant.

Monitoring guidelines

The following guidelines have been developed to assist in the design and implementation of vegetation monitoring projects.

• Establishing Vegetation Quadrats2.47 MB 

• Establishing Vegetation Transects1.82 MB

• Techniques for mapping weed distribution and cover in bushland and wetlands2.57 MB

• The Native Vegetation Condition Assessment and Monitoring Manual for Western Australia4.08 MB 

Further information

• Threatened plants
• Plant conservation research
• Forests
• Conservation on other lands
• Phytophthora dieback