Help with identifying Western Australian native plants
Identifying most species of West Australian plants can be challenging and often difficult or impossible, even with a nice set of photos, no matter how detailed. iNats automatic ID often fails, or only manages to identify the family, not the species, because images are insufficient for a positive ID. Worse, iNats can often get it wrong.
Making accurate identifications is the key to making iNats an effective citizen science project for Western Australia.
If you are prepared to collect systematic data while you are observing your plant, you can try using one of the many online identification tools now available to help us amateurs:
https://florabase.dbca.wa.gov.au/keys/
For Pea flowers: https://keys.lucidcentral.org/search/the-pea-key/
For Acacias: https://apps.lucidcentral.org/wattle/ complemented by http://worldwidewattle.com/.
You can find more here, such as a tool to help identify West Australian native orchids: https://keys.lucidcentral.org/search/
An online botanical glossary is a really handy companion: https://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&glossary=yes
Try and record the following:
• Overall height and width of plant, prostrate / spreading / erect / prickly or not/ climbing / twining;
• Whether it is a tree, branched shrub with a woody stem, a herb with a soft stem, or a climber;
• Shape of plant stems (mature/ young), terete (round) or angled, ribbed, with or without glands, glabrous (smooth without hair) or with hairs, spines (separate from stipules – see below) on all or part of the stems, if hairy, are the hairs simple or stellate (branched), do they have glands at the tips https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichome);
• Leaf morphology (see https://ausflora.net/image-glossary/leaf-shape/), distinguish simple (alternate, opposite, whorl) from compound (often pinnate), whether the leaves are continuous with the stem or not, in which case they have short stalks;
• Leaf size range – minimum and maximum length and width. If pinnate, the minimum and maximum number of leaflets and whether there is a terminal leaflet;
• Leaf shape, and margins – entire, lobed, dentate, etc. and whether there are spines, whether the edge is curled up (recurved), gently or strongly, or curved down (incurved);
• Whether there are stipules at leaf nodes, minimum and maximum length, whether ribbed or plain, whether they accompany only young leaves;
• Length of the pedicels (minimum, maximum), whether hairy or not and the kind of hairs / trichome;
• Whether there are bracteoles, tiny leaflets on the pedicel, and size range if there are, whether they are deciduous and fall off as the flowers mature;
• Size and nature of the calyx, if present, whether hairy or not and the kind of hairs / trichome, whether ribbed or not, whether there are glands, etc.;
• Size and colours of the corolla and its components – there may be several different kinds of petals (or sepals, tepals if the two cannot be distinguished), hair if present, side lobes, whether auriculate (bulge near base);
• If you are prepared to dissect a flower, then measure the length of the parts – anthers, stigma, describe the style tip, shape and appearance;
• If possible, characterize the fruit or seeds;
With this information, you should easily be able to identify the plant using the online tools, or more slowly by checking detailed scientific descriptions when available.
The identification tools are not perfect. The underlying software works by eliminating species that don’t match a set of observed plant characteristics. Most have been created by enthusiastic botanists who are desperate for feedback so they can improve the tools.
As an experiment, I compiled a spreadsheet to help identify the Faboideae we may have in our bush, and this might be useful for you too.
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/gcnt26hbuy00c9n664uz1/Faboides-ID-Table-240131.xlsx?rlkey=xr12a4z9mmjrvq56v5igb0o3q&dl=0
The scientific description data is presented in a table format. Using the drop-down menus at the table header, it is easy to work through dozens of potential matches. For example, working just with the pedicel length and whether it is hairy or not can eliminate many potential matches.
Recently, the Kings Park Herbarium staff (Kevin Thiele, Chris Hollister) have added many new scientific descriptions to Florabase, greatly improving online access to information to help with plant identification. Previously, one had to delve into botanical journals over several decades to obtain this data. Some data is also available from profiles at the Atlas of Living Australia and other state herbaria websites. See, for example, https://profiles.ala.org.au/opus/foa/profile/Thysanotus.
The WA Florabase advanced search can also be very helpful, even if detailed scientific information is not available. You can specify a geographic region, month of flowering, flower colour, plant habit, etc. and the database will provide a list of possible species.
Even with these detailed scientific descriptions, identifying a particular plant can be challenging for an amateur citizen scientist. Botanical journals typically provide a key for a species family to help with scientific identification, but using the key may require careful dissection of a flower or plant specimen to obtain the required data.
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