The Great Sandy-Tanami desert sprawls across the arid heart of Australia, reaching from Western Australia into the Northern Territory and taking in the Little Sandy Desert, Great Sandy Desert, Tanami, and Davenport Murchison Ranges biogeographic regions. It is a landscape of rocky outcrops, red plains, and red sand dunes where spinifex grasslands dominate, punctuated by saltbush shrubs, silver cassia, corkwood trees, acacias, and desert oaks. The climate is hot and dry, and much of the country remains largely uninhabited. Despite its harshness, the ecoregion supports one of the world's richest reptile assemblages, with 578 species recorded, and its flagship animal is the red antechinus, a small mouse-like marsupial predator. Conservation here centers on controlling feral animals such as camels and managing altered fire regimes that threaten the desert's fragile communities. For gardeners drawn to drought-tough plantings, the native flora offers familiar dryland genera including acacias (wattles), desert oaks, and cassia.

At a glance

About the deserts & xeric shrublands biome

Arid and semi-arid lands where low, erratic rainfall and high evaporation limit vegetation to drought-adapted shrubs, succulents, and sparse grasses. Day-to-night temperature swings are large, and life is finely tuned to water scarcity.

Catalog plants suited to this ecoregion

Computed from each plant's stated USDA zone range against this ecoregion's CHELSA-derived current zone range, with the CHELSA mid-century warming delta applied for the projection. Plants whose stated range falls outside both the current and projected zone end up dropped; the rest land in one of the three buckets below.

Collections for this ecoregion

No curated collection's plants all fit this ecoregion's zone range. We surface a collection only when every member would grow here — partial fits get filtered out rather than mislead. As the catalog and the curated set both grow, this section will fill in.

Related ecoregions