“Australian Tropical Rainforest Plants” (the Rain Forest Key, or RFK) – the foremost identification and botanical guide to rainforest plants of northern Australia has reached a new milestone with the release of the eighth edition. For the first time the RFK is available as a mobile application which will enable use in the field without an internet connection. This tool gives everybody, from the enthusiastic amateur through to professional scientists, the power to identify rainforest plants occurring in tropical Australia, from Rockhampton to the Torres Strait and westward as far as the Kimberley Region of Western Australia.
The RFK provides descriptions of 2762 species of plants, over 14,000 images to assist identification and an interactive identification key using LucidTM software. As far as this key is concerned, rainforest encompasses a wide variety of closed forest types in the higher rainfall areas of northern Australia. It does not include eucalypt forests or all mangrove forests. The following commonly used terms are encompassed in our broad rainforest category: Monsoon Forest, Softwood Scrub, Vine Thicket, Gallery Forest, Scrub, Jungle and Vine Forest.