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Australia harbors some of the most nutrient-impoverished soils on Earth. Southwestern Australian soils are especially phosphorus (P) impoverished, due to the age of this ancient landscape and it being unaffected by major geological disturbance for millions of years (Hopper, 2009; Lambers et al., 2010). We are only now beginning to understand how plants acquire and use P in such highly infertile landscapes. At the same time, we are running out of nonrenewable, global phosphate resources in an era when we need more P fertilizers to produce more food and fiber to sustain a growing global population (Vance et al., 2003; Cordell et al., 2009; Gilbert, 2009). Can we learn valuable lessons for crop selection, breeding, and engineering from a flora that has evolved to function in soils with an extremely low availability of P (Lambers et al., 2006, 2008b, 2010)? Or are the traits in this flora highly suitable for the most P …