Flora of Namibia

Stand of Crinum paludosum at Farm Sandhof, Maltahöhe

The Flora of Namibia research project is an extension of the service provided by the National Herbarium and is co-ordinated by the Herbarium curator. This project aims to collate and analyse data, existing and new, on the indigenous and naturalised plants of the country in order to promote knowledge and sustainable utilisation of this resource. Prodromus einer Flora von Südwestafrika (FSWA) (Merxmüller, ed.), which was published between 1966 and 1972 is the only existing comprehensive account of the plants that occur in Namibia and is written entirely in German. This has been an impediment, especially for previously disadvantaged Namibians who wish to study and work in the botanical field.

Crinum paludosum at Farm Sandhof

An up-to-date and regularly updated list of Namibian plants was one of the top priorities identified at the Namibian Biosystematics End-User Workshop in 2003. To address this problem, The National Herbarium of Namibia (WIND) has placed a high priority on translating the Prodromus from German to English and this project has been successfully completed. The second step towards the production of a comprehensive and descriptive English Flora of Namibian Plants (Flora of Namibia) is to undertake taxonomic revisions of the Prodromus, a task which herbarium has already started doing. Dr. Ezekeil G. Kwembeya, the current curator

Pentatrichia avasmontana

Pentatrichia avasmontana in a typical habitat at the Waterberg

of the Herbarium, has done a revision of the genus Crinum in Namibia, as part of his Ph.D study which was completed in 2006. Ms. Esmerialda Klaassen, one of the researchers completed a Master of Science (MSc.) project on the genus Pentatrichia. The results have been incorporated into the Flora project.

Project Co-ordinator

The Flora of Namibia project is a project of the National Herbarium of Namibia and is co-ordinated by the Herbarium curator, Dr Ezekeil Kwembeya.