
Tropical Important Plant Areas in Guinea-Conakry
Identifying Tropical Important Plant Areas (TIPAs) of Guinea-Conakry, West Africa.
TIPAS GuineaIn line with government advice, Christmas at Kew and Glow Wild has been cancelled for the duration of the running programme. Ticket holders will have been contacted via email with their options.
Both Kew Gardens and Wakehurst are open in the daytime (although some of our buildings are closed). Book a time slot to Kew Gardens or Wakehurst before you visit.
Our taxonomic research is specimen-based and mostly in tropical Africa, particularly in Tropical Important Plant Area (TIPA) target countries where our fieldwork with partners is concentrated.
The main focal countries for our research are Guinea, Cameroon, Uganda and Mozambique where we seek to evidence and protect, with partners, critical sites for plant conservation. We also conduct plant collecting surveys in Angola, Sierra Leone and Ethiopia. We work closely with teams from other departments, for example, the Plant Assessment Unit, Spatial Analysis and Plant Chemistry to deliver TIPAs.
Our main outputs are Revisions and Floras (such as Flora Zambesiaca) for groups that are incompletely studied and not covered by monographic researchers in the Integrative Monography team (Comparative Plant and Fungal Biology department). These include: Acanthaceae, Annonaceae, Apocynaceae. s.l., Burmanniaceae, Burseraceae, Celastraceae, Convolvulaceae, Cyperaceae, Ebenaceae, Eriocaulaceae, Gesneriaceae, Leguminosae-Detarioideae, Malvales (especially Sterculiaceae (for example Cola), Grewiaceae (Microcos), Meliaceae, Myrsinaceae, in SE Asia: Nepenthaceae, Ochnaceae, Olaceae, Opiliaceae, Podostemaceae, Rubiaceae (for example Keetia, Coffeeae), Rutaceae (Vepris), Ternstroemiaceae, Thismiaceae, and Triuridaceae.
With African partners, we are evidencing the need for in situ conservation, its prioritisation and implementation, through the Tropical Important Plant Areas protocol. In this connection, we are delivering training in taxonomy and in extinction risk assessment in Africa. With partners in the Natural Capital and Plant Health department at Kew, we are developing research in under-utilised, indigenous, socio-economic species to improve the livelihoods of local communities to motivate the protection, rather than destruction, of natural habitat.
Fieldwork includes collection of material for Plant and Fungal Tree of Life, the Millennium Seedbank Partnership and Economic Botany Collection, if agreements allow.
Curation of the African and Madagascan herbarium specimens at Kew is a major team activity, and includes monitoring pest damage, preparing and incorporating new specimens from our fieldwork and exchanges, specimen identification, rearranging specimens by published revisions, and hosting visiting researchers.
Our specimen identifications are fed into our own project databases, and ultimately released through the Herbcat portal.
Senior research leader
Dr Martin Cheek
Research leaders
Dr Iain Darbyshire
Dr Isabel Larridon
Taxonomist
Dr Ana Rita Simões
Curator-botanists
Dr Maria Alvarez
Nina Davies
Aurélie Grall
Saba Rokni
Martin Xanthos
Curator and field officer
Dr Xander van der Burgt
Seed banking botanists
Daniel Cahen
Beverley Holt
Cameroon TIPA officer
Bruce Murphy
Guinea TIPA technical adviser
Charlotte Couch
Flora Zambesiaca editor
Dr Miguel Angel Garcia
Honorary researchers
Dr Henk Beentje
Dr Jane Browning
Professor Sebsebe Demissew
Keith Ferguson
Dr Shahina Ghazanfar
Mike Gilbert
George Gosline
Dr David Goyder
Yvette Harvey
Alison Heath
Roger Heath
Dr Sylvia Phillips
Dr Kaj Vollesen
PhD student
Denise Molmou
Toral Shah
Luciana Pereira da Silva
Identifying Tropical Important Plant Areas (TIPAs) of Guinea-Conakry, West Africa.
TIPAS GuineaIdentifying and promoting the long-term conservation and sustainable management of Mozambique’s most important sites for plant diversity.
TIPAs MozambiqueThe definitive manual and identification tool for the vascular plant species of South-Central Africa, drained by the Zambezi (Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, Botswana and the Zambezi Region of Namibia).
Flora ZambesiacaDiscovering and disseminating the evolutionary history of all plant and fungal genera.
PAFTOL