Vegetation class map
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Key:
<1%
1-10%
10-50%
>50%
Estimated percentage landcover for vegetation class
Structure
Open eucalypt forest up to 40 m tall with a dense to patchy, species-rich, herbaceous groundcover interspersed with bare ground and scattered shrubs.
Trees
Eucalyptus camaldulensis (river red gum), occasionally with E. largiflorens (black box), E. melliodora (yellow box) or E. microcarpa (grey box).
Shrubs
Acacia salicina (cooba) and A. stenophylla (river cooba) occur as emergent small trees. Smaller shrubs of Chenopodium nitrariaceum (nitre goosefoot), Exocarpos strictus (dwarf cherry) and Muehlenbeckia florulenta (lignum).
Forbs
Alternanthera denticulata (lesser joyweed), Centipeda cunninghamii (common sneezeweed), Chamaesyce drummondii (caustic weed), Cotula australis (common cotula), Glinus lotoides, Oxalis perennans, Pratia concolor (poison pratia), Ranunculus lappaceus (common buttercup), Rumex brownii (swamp dock), Wahlenbergia fluminalis (river bluebell), Marsilea drummondii (common nardoo), Agrostis avenacea var. avenacea (blown grass), Carex appressa (tussock sedge), C. inversa, Juncus ingens (giant rush), J. radula (hoary rush), Paspalidium constrictum (knottybutt grass), P. jubiflorum (warrego grass), Poa fordeana.
Habitat
Fertile alluvium subject to frequent flooding on the sandy banks of major inland rivers and the beds of intermittent streams, billabongs and channelled floodplains.
Distribution
Mid and lower reaches of the Murray and Murrumbidgee River floodplains, lower Lachlan, lower Darling and rivers flowing into the northern Darling floodplains. They also extend up-river throughout the western slopes and north along the tributaries of the Darling into southern Queensland. Down-river they follow the Murray and its tributaries into Victoria and South Australia.
Notes
An extensive group of assemblages with likely floristic trends from the semi-mesic south to the semi-arid north-west. Grades locally into Inland Floodplain Woodlands on less frequently inundated areas and Inland Floodplain Wetlands in permanently inundated sites. The construction of weirs along the major inland rivers has resulted in permanent inundation of some forests, leading to their death, and has also severely curtailed the extent and magnitude of periodic flooding, on which regeneration of the forests depends.
Sources
Porteners (1993); Scott (1992); Sivertsen & Metcalfe (1995); Metcalfe et al. (2004)
See all threatened species associated with this vegetation class
See a
list of species, populations and ecological communities
associated with the Inland Riverine Forests vegetation class.