Lesueur National Park is a national park straddling the boundary between the
Wheatbelt and
Mid West
The Midwestern United States, also referred to as the Midwest or the American Midwest, is one of four Census Bureau Region, census regions of the United States Census Bureau (also known as "Region 2"). It occupies the northern central part of ...
regions of
Western Australia
Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to th ...
, 211 km north of
Perth
Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia. It is the fourth most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a population of 2.1 million (80% of the state) living in Greater Perth in 2020. Perth is ...
. The park was gazetted in 1992. It includes two
mesa
A mesa is an isolated, flat-topped elevation, ridge or hill, which is bounded from all sides by steep escarpments and stands distinctly above a surrounding plain. Mesas characteristically consist of flat-lying soft sedimentary rocks capped by ...
s known as
Mount Lesueur
Mount Lesueur is a near-circular, flat-topped mesa located from Jurien Bay in Western Australia. It rises above the surrounding lateritic plain of Lesueur National Park which has eroded away around it.
Mount Lesueur was first sighted and nam ...
and Mount Michaud, and supports a highly diverse
flora
Flora is all the plant life present in a particular region or time, generally the naturally occurring (indigenous) native plants. Sometimes bacteria and fungi are also referred to as flora, as in the terms '' gut flora'' or '' skin flora''.
E ...
.
Flora
![LesueurNationalPark woodland](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8e/LesueurNationalPark_woodland.JPG)
Lesueur National Park lies in the Geraldton Sandplains
bioregion
A bioregion is an ecologically and geographically defined area that is smaller than a biogeographic realm, but larger than an ecoregion or an ecosystem, in the World Wide Fund for Nature classification scheme. There is also an attempt to use the ...
, which is characterised by scrubby heath with a high number of plants from the family
Proteaceae
The Proteaceae form a family of flowering plants predominantly distributed in the Southern Hemisphere. The family comprises 83 genera with about 1,660 known species. Together with the Platanaceae and Nelumbonaceae, they make up the order Pro ...
.
Vegetation in the park is structurally complex, with patches of woodland amongst shrublands.
There are over 900
indigenous
Indigenous may refer to:
*Indigenous peoples
*Indigenous (ecology), presence in a region as the result of only natural processes, with no human intervention
*Indigenous (band), an American blues-rock band
*Indigenous (horse), a Hong Kong racehorse ...
plant species in the park, many of which are
endemic
Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsew ...
.
[ Rare or ]threatened species
Threatened species are any species (including animals, plants and fungi) which are vulnerable to endangerment in the near future. Species that are threatened are sometimes characterised by the population dynamics measure of ''critical depensa ...
include the Mount Lesueur Grevillea, Forrest's Wattle, the Lesueur Hakea and the Laterite Mallee.
The park is the northern limit for Jarrah
''Eucalyptus marginata'', commonly known as jarrah, djarraly in Noongar language and historically as Swan River mahogany, is a plant in the myrtle family, Myrtaceae and is endemic to the south-west of Western Australia. It is a tree with roug ...
and Mountain Marri, both of which grow as mallees instead of the more usual tall tree form.
Lesueur National Park is under threat from the effects of Phytophthora dieback, a disease which kills plants and is spread through movement of infected soil or water.
See also
* Protected areas of Western Australia
Western Australia is the second largest country subdivision in the world. It contains no fewer than separate Protected Areas with a total area of (land area: – 6.30% of the state’s area). Ninety-eight of these are National Parks, totalli ...
References
External links
*
*
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National parks of Western Australia
Protected areas established in 1992
Wheatbelt (Western Australia)
Australian National Heritage List