The Flora of Burkina Faso and Mali

Recently published, the “Flora of Burkina Faso and Mali” is the late result of a collaboration between Goethe University Frankfurt and the Senckenberg Research Institute

On November 15, 2024, the book “Flore illustrée du Burkina Faso et du Mali” (referred to as “Flora” below) was published as Senckenberg Volume 89. It constitutes a milestone in our knowledge of the diversity of flowering plants and ferns in these countries. “Flora” not only documents plant diversity but also contains an identification key, detailed drawings and distribution maps that greatly simplify the task of identifying plants. Beyond that, it provides a comprehensive foundation for preserving plant diversity in these two countries. The vegetation of this region is an existential necessity for the population since it provides indispensable life support in the form of sustenance, construction materials, fuel and medicines. The medicinal importance of plants cannot be overestimated; for large parts of the population, they still represent the only available and affordable source of medication. Knowledge of these plant species and their distribution is both the prerequisite and the basis for effectively protecting these natural resources and thus safeguarding their future. This point is also stressed by the ministers of education and science of both countries, who wrote the preface to the volume.

Extending across the Sahara, Sahel and Sudan zone, Mali and Burkina Faso cover parts of what is the African continent’s largest vegetation zone by far. “Flora” covers 2,631 species, and thus all the ferns and flowering plants in the two countries, and provides color illustrations for about one quarter of these. Of this total, 2,100 species are found in Burkina Faso and 1,854 in Mali. About 51 percent (1,338) occur in both countries.

The book is written in French, the national language of both countries, and has received substantial support from the Swiss Agency for Development Cooperation (Coopération Suisse). “Flora” is supplied cost-free to the relevant institutions and researchers in Burkina Faso and Mali.

Surveys of diversity in areas that are less well known, such as those covered by “Flora”, are more urgently needed today than ever before. However, such polls require decades of preliminary work and are therefore difficult to realize in today’s scientific climate dominated by short-term third-party funding and a focus on the rapid attainment of citations. That is why such endeavors have become a central task of research collections with programs that by their very nature have longer terms. A long-term research program at Goethe University Frankfurt also played a vital role in the creation of “Flora.”

A multidisciplinary approach

The Frankfurt-based research on Africa seems to have begun with the journeys of exploration into the northeastern and eastern parts of the continent and the collections of private scholar (and Senckenberg Research Society’s second director) Eduard Rüppell (1794–1884). Another important date in this context is the 1925 relocation of the Frobenius Institute, founded in 1898, to Frankfurt, and its subsequent affiliation with Goethe University. The publication of “Flora” can be considered a late result of Collaborative Research Center (CRC) 268 – “History of Culture and Language in the Natural Environment of the West African Savannah” – at Goethe University, which enjoyed the support of the German Research Foundation (DFG) from 1988 to 2022. With its exemplary multidisciplinary approach (with about 50 participants from the fields of ethnology, linguistics, geography, archeology, archaeobotany and botany) as well as its contents-based and structural results, the project left a lasting mark on this field of research in Frankfurt.

The leading authors of the CRC’s application were professors Eike Haberland (ethnology, also director of the Frobenius Institute), Arno Semmel (geography), Jens Lüning (archeology), Herrmann Jungraithmayr (African language studies) and Werner Fricke (cultural geography). The first speaker of CRC 268 was Eike Haberland (1988-1992), who was succeeded after his death by Prof. Günter Nagel (1992–1998) and finally by Prof. Peter Breunig (1998–2002). In the field of contemporary botany, which was first established in the CRC in 1990 after the appointment of Prof. Rüdiger Wittig, a collaboration soon developed with the Department of Botany-Paleobotany (now Botany and Molecular Evolution Research) at the Frankfurt-based Senckenberg Research Institute. The head of the Department of Botany at that time, Prof. Hans Joachim Conert, also conducted research on African grasses in Nigeria and other locations. The CRC’s burgeoning herbarium of West African plant species – to which the archaeobotanists made important contributions – became part of the Herbarium Senckenbergianum (FR), and the botanical research increasingly concentrated on Burkina Faso and Benin.

Training of numerous researchers

Numerous African and German botanists were trained in the CRC (and subsequent research projects in the region), several of whom are now employed as professors of botany in the two countries. Special mention should be made of Prof. Adjima Thiombiano, who completed his degree thesis and doctoral dissertation under the aegis of the CRC, attained his Habilitation with his work in a follow-up project, then became Professor of Botany and later served as president of Thomas Sankara University in Ouagadougou from 2018 to 2022. Since 2022 he has been Minister of Higher Education, Scientific Research and Innovation in Burkina Faso. Other important substantive and structural impacts of the CRC include the founding of the Centre for Interdisciplinary African Studies (ZIAF) in 2003. For over 20 years, ZIAF has played an important role in creating networks and developing multidisciplinary research and teaching on Africa. In the botanical sector, this was followed by nearly two decades of international projects with third-party funding in West Africa, during which Goethe University and the Senckenberg botanists worked closely together. The first of these endeavors was the BIOTA project (2001–2010) supported by the German Ministry of Education and Research, followed by the EU-funded projects SUN (2007–2010) and UNDESERT (2010–2015).

In addition to training young scientists, the construction and furnishing of the university herbarium in Ouagadougou was part of the capacity-building undertaken during these projects. The Senckenberg West African herbarium has become one of the most important collections of plants from Burkina Faso and Benin. It constituted the foundation for a current inventory of the plant species of Burkina Faso, the “Catalogue des plantes vasculaires du Burkina Faso” (Catalogue of Vascular Plants in Burkina Faso) published in 2012. The portal “African Plants – a Photo Guide” documents about 13,000 African species photographed in their natural habitats and has since attracted over one million visitors. The last and most important missing step toward attaining comprehensive knowledge of plant diversity in Burkina Faso was the publication of “Flora”, which also covers Mali, a country with a very similar flora but a much larger area. The creation of this volume required further international collaboration and extensive preliminary scientific work. These efforts included the decades-long botanical research conducted locally by the first author, Jean César, and also the African Plant Database established by Cyrille Chatelain at the Geneva Conservatory and Botanical Garden, which is a continually updated global reference work for the correct scientific names of African plants.

The Palmengarten in Frankfurt has also been a member of this research alliance for several years, whereby research conducted here focuses both on fungi as well as plants. Its current geographic focus is on botanical-mycological research in Benin.

Georg Zizka

Botanist Georg Zizka was Professor of Diversity and Evolution of Higher Plants at the Institute of Ecology, Evolution and Diversity at Goethe University’s Faculty of Biological Sciences, and at the same time head of the Senckenberg Research Institute’s Division of Botany and Molecular Evolution. His research focuses on the plant diversity and evolution of flowering plants, their origin, as well as modifications caused by human impacts.