Looking through the Department of Environment and Primary Industries (DEPI) publication “Advisory List of Rare or Threatened Plants in Victoria 2014” I noticed a couple of listings under Glycine, including Clover Glycine. As it is a native pea species and one of my projects this Spring is to identify as many of the pea species as I can, I looked it up online. It turns out the species I had photographed and identified as Twining Glycine (by looking through field guides) last year is actually Clover Glycine. The DEPI publication outlines three different systems of classifying rare or endangered plants, and the Clover Glycine is listed on all three of them.
- The National Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act lists Clover Glycine as “VU” meaning “Vulnerable: A taxon is vulnerable when it is not critically endangered or endangered but is facing a high risk
of extinction in the wild in the medium-term future.” - The Department of Environment and Primary Industries (DEPI) list refers to plants in Victoria, and this also rates Clover Glycine as vulnerable. Under their definition, vulnerable means ” Vulnerable in Victoria: not presently endangered but likely to become so soon due to continued depletion; occurring mainly on sites likely to experience changes in land-use which would threaten the survival of the plant in the wild; or, taxa whose total population is so small that the likelihood of recovery from disturbance, including localised natural events such as drought, fire or landslip, is doubtful”
- A second National list of rare plants, assessed under the Environment Protection Act lists Clover Glycine as “L”, meaning “Listed as threatened”.
Apparently Clover Glycine is a plant which is attractive to grazing animals, so with so much land being used to graze livestock, the occurrence of the plant continues to dwindle. We only have a small patch of Clover Gycine and the fact that we have any is probably due to the fact that the land on our property has never been used for livestock.
I’ve only recently come across the lists of rare and threatened species. So far, I haven’t really had time to sit down and work through them, but I do intend to do so. One of the things I would like to understand is the difference between these three classification lists in a little more detail. I’ll report back to you when I have worked it all out.
Fifteen Acres 
Hello from the USA here. You have a lovely blog. I am an edible plant
enthusiast. I would love to pay you for plants or seeds of glycine latrobeana. I want to grow the plant for its own sake and the possibility of crossing it with soybeans.
Hi Nigel, Thanks for your interest in the plants and the website. The Glycine Latrobeana is a protected species of plant here in Australia and it is illegal to remove them or interfere with their growth in any way, so sorry, I can’t oblige your request. The plant is rare as its habitat is grassland and most grassland is grazed by livestock. We are just fortunate to find a small pocket of them here, and we can’t even mow the grass where they grow – not that this is an issue for us. We feel fortunate to have them growing. Thanks again, Lisa