System Maintenance Outage

The server you are currently viewing will be unavailable for a 1 hour period soon to permit system patches to be applied. We apologise for any inconvenience.

The outage begins at 07:00 on Monday, 1 September 2008 (AWST) and continues until 08:00 on Monday, 1 September 2008 (AWST)

Did you notice?

There is, in general, a diminishing relationship between figures in subsequent rows of the table, as figures in each category are subtracted from the ones above.
Eg. in each column: A - B = C.

Having trouble deciding ...

... the most appropriate data for your purpose? The highlighted rows are the recommended figures if you need:

to cite the actual number of known vascular plant entities in WA ^D, or
a conservative estimate of the number of well-documented vascular plant species ^H.

'Green's Census'

For those familiar with Green, J.W. (1985) Census of the vascular plants of Western Australia 2nd ed., WA Herbarium, Perth and subsequent supplements, the following four PDF tables are presented in the style of Green's statistical summaries. They provide further details corresponding to row H in the above table. Data also sourced on 1^st June 2008.

Table 1. Conspectus Of Families And Genera With Statistics
Table 2. Families Ranked By Number Of Species
Table 3. Genera Ranked By Number Of Species
Table 4. Size Of Vascular Plant Divisions

Western Australian Flora Statistics

This page provides the user with a set of standard statistics on the size, diversity and endemism of the Western Australian vascular flora.

Current Statistics - Vascular Flora

Analysis of the size of vascular plant divisions for various categories of name
Category	Pteridophytes	Gymnosperms	Monocots	Dicots	Total

Total names ^A	141	34	3591	15511	19277
Non-current names ^B	36	10	1035	3937	5018
Current names ^C	105	24	2556	11574	14259
Current taxa ^D	98	24	2412	10608	13142
Current species ^E	96	24	2250	9600	11970
Manuscript names ^F	0	0	39	335	374
Phrase names ^G	0	0	211	975	1186
Published species ^H	96	24	2024	8464	10608
Published alien species ^I	8	7	345	811	1171
Published native species ^J	88	17	1679	7653	9437

Notes Data sourced on 1^st June 2008. Compare with the 2007 figures. ^A - total number of vascular plant names in the database ^B - number of synonymous, excluded or misapplied names (ie. plant names no longer in current use, at least in WA) ^C - number of currently accepted plant names (ie. includes the species-level name when infra-species exist) ^D - number of currently accepted taxa (ie. excludes the species-level name when infra-species of that taxon exist) ^E - number of currently accepted species (ie. only the species-level names, excludes any infra-species names) ^F - number of proposed but unpublished species (ie. informal names proposed on specimens or in manuscripts) ^G - number of assigned but unpublished species (ie. informal names assigned to specimens for further analysis) ^H - number of formally published species names (ie. formally published names described in botanical literature) ^I - number of published naturalised alien species (ie. formally published names of weed species occurring in WA) ^J - number of published species native to Western Australia (ie. formally published names of native WA species).

2008 Highlights

For the vascular plants, a brief comparison of the 2008 with the 2007 data shows:

the addition of 808 names to the Census of Western Australian Plants database;
a decrease (-65) in the number of manuscript names in current use, down to 374, most likely due to the excellent publication output in the last year combined with the conversion of many manuscript names to phrase names as part of the Australian Plant Census project;
a concommitent increase (+90) in the number of phrase names in current use, up to 1186;
a significant increase in the number of published species, up 234 (214 native and 20 alien) to 10,608 species, due in part to the publication of two issues of the Science Division journal Nuytsia late last year, including the special BCI-SOS 'banded ironstone' issue.

Other Collections Statistics

Data sourced on Sunday, 1 June 2008. Other core statistics often required for citation in various works include the number of:

specimens now held in the WA Herbarium Specimen Database (WAHERB) = 683,540
names now held in the WA Herbarium Census of WA Plants Database (WACENSUS) = 21,279
accessions now held in the WA Herbarium Library Database (WALIB) = 23,310

Compiler’s Note. While the current contents are manual concatenations of census data, or static tables drawn from recent published works, it is intended that future versions of this page will contain live flora statistics drawn directly from the constantly maintained datasets held at the Western Australian Herbarium. At that time we would also seek to disseminate the standard logic behind the accurate calculation of these statistics. In this way, not only will the latest figures be available at all times, but the correct methodology for calculating and applying those figures will become better understood.

Compiled by Alex Chapman; last updated on 13 June 2008.