Africa's Plants - a Database Project Has Recorded 65,000 Species - and Is Still Growing

The African Plant Database lists 65,000 species of flowering plants, ferns and conifers found on the African continent and Madagascar. Since 2006, every plant species ever documented in Africa and Madagascar has been included in the massive online database, with about 200 new species added every year. Cyrille Chatelain is a curator at the Geneva Botanical Garden in Switzerland. He's researched plants in Côte d'Ivoire, Madagascar and north Africa and manages the plant database. Here he explains its importance.

What's been built and why is it so special?

The database was developed by the Geneva Botanical Garden in Switzerland - involved for more than 60 years in research and conservation projects in Africa - in collaboration with the South African National Biodiversity Institute. It's an online list of all known African plant species from almost 1.9 million places on the continent.

The value of the African Plant Database lies in the fact that it is updated every day. This is continuous work that never ends. It is not only new species that are added. Over 1,000 amendments and updates about plants are also added every year.

The work of hundreds of botanists, scientists and environmentalists is used in the African Plant Database all the time. The database supports ecological research and makes it possible for people to study the history and evolution of Africa's flora.

In the face of climate change and accelerating biodiversity loss, the list also supports conservation. Because it sets out where all the different plants are located, this makes it easier to protect endangered plant species. Scientists and environmentalists can also use the database to see how resilient ecosystems are to climate change, and come up with ways to help.

Reliable plant data is also vital for food security, traditional medicine, and land management across Africa.

What's new on the database?

We've just added 3,860 species found in Burundi. This includes the location of the approximately 32,000 places where they can be found.

This is the first comprehensive record of the geographical distribution of Burundi's plant species. We received this information from the newly published Checklist of the Vascular Plants of Burundi by Salvatore Ntore and colleagues, released in 2025 by the National Botanic Garden of Belgium.

Before this, the database didn't have any information at all on Burundi.

What's next?

Maintaining and expanding the database is a major challenge for the small research team. Each of the 200 yearly updates involves detailed scientific work: correcting errors, verifying source data, and resolving taxonomic synonyms.

The database also standardises the way plants are recorded and classified. This is essential for the scientific community working on African plants to share information.

Some regions, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola or Central African Republic, still lack comprehensive plant inventories. Their plant species are not well represented in the database. A huge effort is necessary to document the plants of these countries. But access remains difficult because of political instability in these large territories.

So far, the database does not cover Africa's island states, apart from Madagascar. Nevertheless, it is unmatched globally. The only similar list is Australia's Plant Name Index.

Essential information on scientific names, geographical distribution, biological characteristics and ecological data is available on the database. This gives anyone who logs onto the website a full, continent-wide perspective on plant distribution in Africa.

Before it was launched, there was no full online record of African plant diversity. Botanical information was fragmented across different regions. The database filled this gap by uniting all the data on every plant on the continent in an online list available to the public.

Why is it important?

The database is really important for scientists and environmentalists when they compile new checklists of plants in countries in order to inform research and conservation programmes.

Its data makes it possible to uncover previously undocumented species, track ecological changes over time, and decide how to conserve endangered plants.

It is a critical tool for biodiversity research. Conservationists use it to monitor the biodiversity of any part of the African continent over time, mapping where the different plants of the continent are located.

At the moment, 65% of the 65,000 species covered have descriptions and distribution maps. This means that 35% do not. The African Plant Database research team plans to complete this work.

Continued use of the database and more information supplied by regional scientists will help ensure that the database remains a living, relevant and inclusive scientific resource.

Cover photo: Different species of plants