KNOWLEDGE OF THE PLANTS of Australia can be thought about under three heads: the scientific, the practical and the aesthetic. This chapter is about the scientific and the practical.

Scientific collecting and study began in the seventeenth century and blossomed in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This flowering came before knowledge of genetics, and thus lacked a theoretical foundation, but it was scientific in that it was orderly and systematic, proceeding by an internationally agreed set of rules – although ‘international’ in this context of course meant ‘European’. It was a part of an imperial appropriation of the earth's natural resources, and the plant material ended up in European herbaria, beginning with Dampier's material in Oxford, and continuing, in my account, with George Grey, Phillip Parker King and Allan Cunningham, all of whom reported home to king and Kew (as did Banks from the east coast).

Practical knowledge, the subject of this chapter, was concerned with utility: what could be eaten, what not, all the other uses of the flora, for building, for stock fodder and, later, as ecological indicators. For example, ‘jam’ country was considered good for wheat in south-western Australia, which is to say that a species of wattle (Acacia acuminata) was found to be an indicator of soil quality. This is an area of continuing overlap, as ecological understanding (scientific) becomes a tool of better management (practical).