The Tirari-Sturt stony desert is one of the driest parts of arid interior Australia, centred on South Australia and reaching into New South Wales and the Northern Territory, taking in the Sturt Stony Desert, the Tirari Desert, and the Flinders and Gawler Ranges. Its ancient gibber pebble plains, red sands, sand dunes, and ephemeral salt and clay-pan lakes are vegetated by chenopod shrublands, belah and mallee open woodlands, and mulga (Acacia aneura) woodlands and scrub. The climate is hot and dry, with summer maximum temperatures reaching about 50 degrees Celsius. Much of the ecoregion remains relatively intact, and it shelters distinctive arid-zone marsupials such as the crest-tailed mulgara, its flagship species, though native habitats are pressured by overgrazing from feral camels, horses, goats, and rabbits along with invasive weeds. Hardy native genera here include river red gum (Eucalyptus camaldulensis) and sandhill wattle (Acacia ligulata), both useful references for heat- and drought-tolerant planting.

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