Welcome to AusGrass2

Please note that since the death of Bryan Simon in Jan 2015, this site is not currently being actively maintained. It will be kept open and available for users until a more sustainable platform for its content is determined, probably following a meeting of grass taxonomists planned for July 2016.

For taxonomic or specialist queries about grasses or the taxa covered in Ausgrass2, please contact Maria Vorontsova <M.Vorontsova@kew.org> or Terry Macfarlane <Terry.Macfarlane@DPaW.wa.gov.au>

AusGrass2 builds on the foundation of AusGrass (Sharp & Simon 2002) from data maintained in DELTA format, one for species and infra-specific taxa and another for genera. New features in AusGrass2 are Australian grass literature references, references to Australian illustrations, basionyms and protologue information and derivation of species names (Clifford & Bostock 2007). There is an update of all dichotomous keys. Information is constantly revised as feedback is received by users.

Most of the content from that publication has been brought across to this online version. As with AusGrass the morphological data for species is the same as that used for the Kew online grass flora Clayton, W.D., Vorontsova, M.S., Harman, K.T. and Williamson, H. (2006 onwards). GrassBase - The Online World Grass Flora. http://www.kew.org/data/grasses-db.html and the data for the generic descriptions originates from Watson, L. and Dallwitz, M.J. (1992 onwards). The Grass Genera of the World:  http://delta-intkey.com

When it became apparent that ABRS was unable to produce a second edition of the AusGrass CD, it was decided to  develop the AusGrass2 Scratchpad. The need for the update of grass information to users is necessary due to the constantly changing status of botanical names, grass taxonomy and phylogeny world wide. To illustrate this some names in the published Flora have already changed - the sinking of Austrodanthonia, Notodanthonia and Joycea into Rytidosperma for example.

Bryan K Simon & Yucely Alfonso