The North-South synergy for plant collections in Cameroon began in 1869 when K sent the first botanist to collect on Mount Cameroon. The colonial administration of Germany created the Victoria [Limbe] Botanic Garden in 1924, and the Herbarium (SCA) was established in the garden during he British rule in 1959 as a databank for the Mount Cameroon area. The ‘Section de Recherches Forestieres du Cameroun’(YA) was created in 1948 during the French rule and it later became the National Herbarium of Cameroon. Many Herbaria in Europe and USA have sent taxonomists to Cameroon for collecting. Thanks to assistance from the North, the synergy has produced about 65,000 specimens in the working collection in YA and with many duplicates in international herbaria, a floristic database, 42 volumes of the series Flore du Cameroun, a vegetation map and nine checklists for conservation. Also the capacity building for Cameroonian taxonomists was effective thanks to workshops in P and training at the University of Yaounde and School of Forestry. But still there are gaps for collection and lack of plant taxonomists. The challenges for the future are to keep improving the skills of taxonomists, improve the collection and complete the publication of families for the Flore du Cameroun. Thanks to the institutions of the North, the flora of Cameroon is one of the best known in tropical Africa.
Tropical Plant Collections: Legacies from the Past? Essential Tools for the Future?