This team consists of enthusiastic members who are primarily amateur botanists but each having other fetishes like birds, reptiles, photography, geology, spiders, etc. This makes for a very enjoyable botanical survey trip.
Team members have areas of speciality eg Eremophia, Dryandera, grasses, etc, but are general botanists that contribute to the overall success of the DD survey.
We interact with staff in the Department of Parks and Wildlife at the Western Australian Herbarium. Plant Collection Permits are obtained prior to each DD survey.
Our citizen science activity contributes to the flora specimen collection and database at the herbarium. The herbarium staff reciprocates by naming the specimens collected as well as providing feedback on the quality of the material provided.
The DD Botany team has developed with each successive DD trip, from:
- initially providing a snapshot of specimens collected on a survey trip
- working with known species list to find additional species
- extending the known distribution of species and sometimes (excitingly)
- finding unrecorded (new) species