New NT plant checklist published
The Northern Territory (NT) Herbarium has recently published an updated checklist of the vascular plants of the Northern Territory.
This is the first update to the checklist – commonly referred to as ‘the census’ – since 2017. This publication provides a handy ‘go to’ reference for plant names currently accepted for use in the Northern Territory that can be easily printed in hardcopy form for use in the field.
This publication compiles information on the classification, naming, conservation status and introduced status of plants known to occur in the NT. This publication represents the 8th edition of ‘the census’, the first edition being published in 1972. It provides an interesting historical comparison of the number of species recorded for the Northern Territory in each edition of the census. This edition has seen the number of species recognised in the NT increase by 93 since the 2017 edition to a total of 4957, with 837 (18%) of these only occurring in the Territory. Additionally, best estimates suggest approximately 10% of the total number of species are ‘not native’ to the Territory, with introduced species representing approximately 25% of the newly recorded species for the Territory since the last published census.
This publication is available on the NT Flora website via the “NT Vascular Plants” tab by clicking on the PDF Checklist button. There is also a downloadable spreadsheet version available on this page. The latter is updated daily as changes in our knowledge and understanding of the flora occur and therefore represents the most currently available census of the NT’s vascular flora.
