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This thread is a bit stale, but the following
information, taken from a talk by David Albrecht, botanist at the Alice Springs
herbarium may be of interest.
The Flora of Central Australia is now 20 years
old.
1217 species in the Flora are
unchanged
30 never existed
278 have changed
The changes would include the splitting of genera
such as, Corymbia, out of Eucalyptus.
and Allocasuarina out of
Casuarina
The reverse has happened with the lumping of
Plechtrachne into Triodia
Reclassification of local varieties as separate
species, what was Eucalyptus microtheca is now E.
coolibah
It is always possible that future taxonomists will
reverse some of the splitting and lumping.
I do not have any statistics, but I suspect that
bird names are more stable than plant names.
Over the same period 359 new species have been
added to the region. An alarming feature is that 108 of these are new
weeds. That is more on top of the many feral species that were well known
20 years ago.
Robert Read
Alice Springs
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