Australia

New Authoritative Guides to Australian Species of Acacia
Maurice McDonald
CSIRO Forestry and Forest Products
PO Box E4008, Kingston ACT 2604, Australia
Tel: +61 2 6281 8221
Fax: +61 2 6281 8266
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Two major works on Australian species of Acacia have recently been published. All currently recognised species, subspecies and variants of Australian wattles have been described and illustrated in two volumes of the Flora of Australia series. Complementing the Flora volumes is an electronic key titled WATTLE - Acacias of Australia. WATTLE is compact disk that enables all species treated in the Flora of Australia volumes to be quickly and accurately named, irrespective of whether specimens are in flower or fruit. These works provide a complete account of nearly 1200 taxa for the first time and are the culmination of a decade of work by a team of botanists from throughout Australia.

The Flora of Australia volumes include background essays on the relationships, biology, fossil history and utilisation of wattles, authoritative descriptions, identification keys, bibliographic information, and notes on ecology and distribution. All taxa are illustrated by line drawings and 128 colour photographs of a range of species are also presented. The WATTLE CD has a browser interface enables quick access to the identification component or to similar information presented in the Flora of Australia volumes. All characters used to key-out a species in the identification component are clearly described and illustrated. A botanical description, a distribution map and diagnostic drawings, annotated to highlight the most critical features of the plant, are included for all species treated in WATTLE. The works are published as:

Orchard A.E. and Wilson J.G. (Eds) (2001). Flora of Australia, 11A and 11 B, Mimosaceae, Acacia parts 1 and 2. Australian Biological Resources Study/CSIRO Publishing: Melbourne.

Maslin B.R. (coordinator) (2001). Wattle: Acacias of Australia. CD-ROM, Version 1.0. Australian Biological Resources Study: Canberra/Department of Conservation and Land Management: Perth/CSIRO Publishing: Melbourne.

Both are available from CSIRO PUBLISHING PO Box 1139 Collingwood Victoria 3066 Australia or via their web site at http://www.publish.csiro.au/ or email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

© 2003 International Union of Forestry Research Organizations

New website World Wide Wattle with extensive information on Acacia in general and on Australian species in particular, offering a lot of text and pictures from the a.m. books.

Other Australian websites are the Acacia page

and the Australian National Herbarium