Press Release

World of African Plants Now Accessible Online

London/Cameroon, Thursday 1 March 2007: A wealth of information on the world of African plants is now available at the touch of a button. Today saw the launch of an innovative new initiative, Aluka (www.aluka.org), an international not-for-profit organization collaborating with institutions and individuals around the world to produce a digital library of scholarly resources from and about Africa. With the introduction of Aluka's first content area, the African Plants Initiative (API), online access will be made available to an extensive library of African plants research material, including scientific and historical data as well as photographs and illustrations, which are joined together for the first time in a single resource.

The API content area in Aluka was developed with over 20 participating countries from Africa, Europe and the USA, and will provide botanists and conservationists working in Africa and elsewhere with online access to information of vital importance to botanical training and research and conservation work throughout the continent. Significantly, many specimens will now be accessible by scientists and researchers in Africa, increasing their capacity to identify, monitor and manage the native species of their continent. Contribution to the Aluka resource thereby enables RBG Kew and other partner institutes to fulfil obligations under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

Core data consists of high resolution images of African type specimens. These reference specimens are essential in classifying and naming living organisms, a fundamental activity which underpins all other species-level biological research, including conservation work. Aluka holds over 250,000 specimen records from partner herbaria, including over 66,500 from RBG Kew's world-famous Herbarium collection. In the past, experts have only been able to access these invaluable type specimens by visiting herbaria around the world, an exercise that has proven prohibitive in terms of time and money for many African botanists.

In addition to the digitized type specimens, Aluka will bring together invaluable additional reference material relating to African plants including photographs, line drawings, water colour illustrations, oil paintings and extensive plant-related literature. Together, these materials provide information ranging from the morphology and uses of plant species to the history of plant exploration and discovery in Africa. The digital library provides convenient access to aggregated material from previously disparate collections and facilitates linkages that were previously difficult or impossible, adding value to the collection as a whole.

The Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, a partner in Aluka's development of API, has contributed a wealth of material from its world-renowned library, archives, botanical art and economic botany collections, including maps and papers from Livingstone's Zambezi expedition and over 2,000 sheets of Africa-related material from the Directors' Correspondence covering early botanical exploration of tropical Africa. Two major works, The Flora of West Tropical Africa and the Useful Plants of West Tropical Africa are available electronically for the first time as a result of this project, as are over 1,200 original illustrations from Curtis' Botanical Magazine. 

RBG Kew's involvement in API began from its inception at the Association for the Taxonomic Study of the Flora of Tropical Africa (AETFAT) congress in Ethiopia in September 2003 and a dedicated team has been employed on the project digitizing specimens and data since March 2004. API is being introduced by Aluka at the AETFAT conference in Yaoundé, Cameroon. Kew has now completed the digitization of the African type specimens, but work continues on the digitization of Directors' Correspondence archive and botanical reference works (Flora Capensis, Flora of Tropical Africa and Flora of Tropical East Africa). Meanwhile, the API content made available in Aluka will also continue to grow through ongoing contributions from other partner institutions.

Ends

Further Information

For further information please contact Anna Quenby, Catherine or Oliver Basciano in the RBG Kew Press Office, telephone 020 8332 5607, e-mail pr@kew.org or visit www.kew.org/press.

Notes to Editors

API partner countries : Austria, Belgium, Cameroon, Ethiopia, France, Germany, Ghana, Ireland, Italy, Kenya, Madagascar, Namibia, Netherlands, Nigeria, Portugal, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Tanzania, Uganda, United Kingdom, United States of America, Zimbabwe

Aluka

Aluka is a not-for-profit international collaboration of educational and cultural institutions with a mission is to build a high-quality scholarly resource of materials from and about Africa. Aluka seeks to attract contributed collections about Africa from institutions and individuals around the world and to offer access to the digital library for free to African institutions. Aluka currently focuses content contributions in three areas: African Plants, African Cultural Heritage Sites and Landscapes, and Struggles for Freedom in Southern Africa. Available content is increased through partnerships and contributions from individuals and organizations around the world. For further information please visit www.aluka.org.

Royal Botanic Gardens , Kew

RBG Kew has contributed to the knowledge of African plants for over two centuries through its extensive collection of Herbarium specimens, the publication of Floras (most recently, the Flora of East Africa), plus many partnerships and joint venture projects with herbaria and conservation organizations around the world including plant specimen and seed collecting, conservation assessments and habitat restoration projects.

The recent publication Woody Plants of Western African Forests, is the first publication describing in a single volume the forest trees, shrubs and lianes of Western African forests from Senegal to Ghana, it serves as an identification guide to 2,200 species and has over 5,600 photographs and line drawings. For further information regarding Kew publishing, please see www.kewbooks.com.

The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew is a world famous scientific organisation, internationally respected for its outstanding living collection of plants and world-class herbarium as well as its scientific expertise in plant diversity, conservation and sustainable development in the UK and around the world. Kew Gardens is a major international visitor attraction and its 132 hectares of landscaped gardens attract over one million visitors per year. Kew was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in July 2003 and represents over 250 years of historical landscape. For further information please visit www.kew.org.

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