Urgent Service Outage
As a result of a recent power outage, the DEC network will be unavailable for a further 8 hours so that electrical repairs can be made to damaged equipment in the DEC server room. This outage affects the site you are viewing. We apologise for any inconvenience.
The outage begins at 08:00 on Saturday, 9 August 2008 (AWST) and continues until 16:00 on Saturday, 9 August 2008 (AWST)
Interactive Keys
Available Keys
Key to Genera
A key to Western Australian genera of flowering plants. The most useful general-purpose key.
Perform an identification to genus level directly, without reference to any family.
Key to Families
A key to Western Australian families of flowering plants.
Perform an identification to family level. Useful when only family-level information is required.
Key to Species
Perform a simple identification of Western Australian vascular plant species using our standard search form.
Based on the databased DELTA data captured originally for The Western Australian Flora - A Descriptive Catalogue (2000) and continuously maintained since.
Keys to Genera Within Families
Perform an identification to genus level within a particular family of vascular plant. 48 keys are currently available. (The same User Guide and Project Details above apply for these keys too.)
| Available family keys | ||
|---|---|---|
What are Interactive Keys?
Interactive keys are computer-aided identification tools that assist with finding the correct name for an unidentified specimen. These types of key provide numerous benefits over the traditional printed dichotomous key including:
- ordering the characters to start with the one that best separates the remaining taxa
- characters can be scored in any order, depending on the material you have available
- illustrations and text explaining the terminology used for many of the plant parts
- integrating keys directly into other descriptive content such as images and maps.
How to Get Started
- Check the system requirements and install the DELTA System software.
- DELTA Intkey Tutorial explaining the most efficient way to use our keys.
- User Guide. Notes on icons and data presentation for the DELTA Intkey set of Western Australian Genera and Families of Flowering Plants keys.
