Forskere har i seks årtier gennemtrawlet alt fra Serengetis græssletter til regnskove og Kilimanjaros skråninger i jagten på en planterigdom, der i mangt og meget er enestående og bevaringsværdig i lyset af det stigende menneskelige pres.
When researchers started the task in 1948 they thought it would only take 15 years to finish, BBC online writes Thursday.
But it took 135 botanists from 21 countries six decades to catalogue all the 12.104 wild plant species of Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania.
1.500 plant species new to science have been described during the project from acacia trees to flowering plants.
114 newly discovered plant species were listed in the last four years alone.
“Without proper identification and names there is no communication about plants, and so all work on and with wild plants would rest on quicksand,” Dr Henk Beentje, the current editor of the record titled “Flora of Tropical East Africa” (FTEA), said.
“Now all further work on the wild plants of this region will be built on a solid foundation – not just botanical work but work on local uses by local people, ecology, vegetation work, zoology, and, of course, conservation,” noted he.
Habitats in the region vary radically from the grasslands of the Serengeti, through to the dense rainforest called Bwindi in Uganda and the afro-alpine moorlands of Kilimanjaro.
The region is very biodiverse, and home to e.q. the baobab tree, the cape chestnut and the camphor bush. Approximately 2.500 of the species on the record are not found anywhere else.
