page_title: Kimberley (Western Australia)
section_title: Flora
hierarchical_section_title: Kimberley (Western Australia) / Ecology / Flora
caption_attribution_description: English: Boab tree near Kununurra WA
context_page_description: The Kimberley is the northernmost of the nine regions of Western Australia. It is bordered on the west by the Indian Ocean, on the north by the Timor Sea, on the south by the Great Sandy and Tanami deserts in the region of the Pilbara, and on the east by the Northern Territory.
  The region was named in 1879 by government surveyor Alexander Forrest after Secretary of State for the Colonies John Wodehouse, 1st Earl of Kimberley.
context_section_description: Much of the Kimberley is chiefly covered in open savanna woodland dominated by low bloodwood and boab trees (Adansonia gregorii) with Darwin stringybark and Darwin woollybutt eucalyptus in the wetter areas. The red sandy soil of the Dampier Peninsula in the south is known for its characteristic pindan wooded grassland while in the more fertile areas like the Ord valley the trees are grasslands of Chrysopogon, Aristida, Dicanthium and Xerochloa (rice grass) in the wetter valleys. The banks of the Ord, Fitzroy and other rivers are home to a greater variety of vegetation while in sheltered gorges of the high rainfall north there are patches of tropical dry broadleaf forest, called monsoon forests, deciduous vine forest or vine thicket in Australia (often mistakenly called "dry rainforest"), which were unknown to science until 1965, and are one of the most floristically rich parts of Australia outside the Wet Tropics and southwestern WA. There are also areas of mangrove in river estuaries where the coast is flatter.
caption: Boab tree near Kununurra
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