Welcome to AusGrass3

March 2026

AusGrass3 is a comprehensive resource for the taxonomy of Australian grasses.  Originally developed by Bryan K. Simon and colleagues, it builds on the foundation established in AusGrass (Sharp & Simon 2002) and subsequent developments in the online platform AusGrass2 (https://ausgrass2.myspecies.info/).

Following the decommissioning of the previous hosting platform, AusGrass has now been re-hosted as v3 to ensure its continued availability to the botanical community.  We are pleased to confirm that the resource will not only remain accessible, but will also progressively resume updating and development.

We honour the foundational contributions of Bryan K. Simon (1943-2015) and his colleagues to Australian grass taxonomy and the development of AusGrass.

For enquiries about AusGrass3, or if you would like to contribute to this project, please contact:

Rachel Butler: <placeholder>
Melody Fabillo: <placeholder>
Terry Macfarlane: terry.macfarlane@dbca.wa.gov.au

We are grateful to the Queensland Herbarium, Department of the Environment, Tourism, Science and Innovation (DETSI), Queensland, and the Western Australian Herbarium, Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions (DBCA), Western Australia, for their collaboration in the ongoing development of AusGrass3.

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From Bryan Simon & Yucely Alfonso - welcome page AusGrass2
(https://ausgrass2.myspecies.info/):

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