Plant Life on the Sandplains in Southwest Australia

Southwest Australia is a region increasingly recognised for its high levels of biodiversity and endemism, and was recognized in 2000 as one of the world’s twenty-five ‘biodiversity hotspots’ based largely on its highly diverse, endemic and threatened flora.

Plant Life on the Sandplains in Southwest Australia: A global biodiversity hotspot has been assembled with current research and understanding about the south-western Australian flora, the greatest richness of which is on the sandplain, especially on the most nutrient-impoverished soils. The thirty-nine contributors include leading scientists and early-career researchers dealing with issues on the environment, biodiversity, speciation and phylogenetics, ecosystem composition and coevolution.

To be able to conserve threatened species, the animals that depend upon them, and the habitats they live in, we need to understand their functioning in the past and present, to protect them for the future.

This is a thorough revision and expansion of Kwongan – Plant Life of the Sandplain (Pate & Beard, 1984), and demonstrates how much knowledge and understanding of kwongan has been gained over the past thirty years. Aboriginal knowledge of plant life on the sandplains was and is profound, and this basis of understanding is included in this beautifully illustrated book.