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The conservation of plants, animals and habitats is a field that grows constantly. Even in a country like South Africa, where there are many botanists, new discoveries are made all the time. In the year 2000 alone, 60 new plants were discovered and described by taxonomists. Most of them are fynbos species.

Many of our neighbouring countries, on the other hand, have not had their plant biodiversity sufficiently explored or described. Important to note is the fact that what is common in one country could be rare in another; plant distribution does not confine itself to human borders.

Rare plants need to be protected and cultivated "ex-situ", which means away from their natural environments, in botanical gardens. This need has become especially pressing because of possible climate and distribution changes.

SABONET, managed by the NBI and funded by the Global Environmental Facility and the UN Development Programme, helps to address these problems. Launched three years ago, the Southern African Botanical Diversity Network builds capacity in the region's herbaria and botanical gardens.

One of many SABONET workshops was held in the Pretoria and Witwatersrand National Botanical Gardens in mid-March 2001. There were representatives from 20 gardens in eight countries - Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

The workshop produced an action plan for Southern African Botanical Gardens, a major contribution to the proposed Global Strategy for Plant Conservation.

The SABONET initiative includes training courses, support for postgraduate studies, regional plant-collecting expeditions, computerisation of herbaria, preparation of national plant checklists, regional botanical diversity inventories and needs assessments.

Grass species are among the least well-known, yet have the most potential for wealth-creation in the sense that they provide grazing for livestock and wild animals, and protect our soils from erosion.

The SABONET project is currently preparing a Plant Red Data List for the 10 countries of southern Africa.

SABONET is informed and supported by the Global Taxonomy Initiative. A GTI regional workshop was held at the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden in February and March 2001, under the auspices of the International Convention on the Conservation of Biological Diversity (CBD).

The Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) helped sponsor the attendance of 21 delegates from African countries, which strengthened links for North-South collaboration.

One of the recommendations of the "Kirstenbosch Declaration" was the drawing up of a first-ever taxonomic needs-assessment (of plants, animals and micro-organisms) for the African continent.

Other NBI achievements and activities over the past year include:

• For the 24th year, the NBI exhibit at Chelsea was awarded a Gold Medal.
• An Interim Material Access Agreement between NBI and the Kew Millennium Seedbank was signed, formalising a technology transfer that will inject an amount of R1,25 million into the NBI genetic resources conservation programme over the next five years.
• A delegation of six senior staff from the Beijing Botanical Gardens, China, visited NBI to discuss collaboration and a staff exchange programme.
• The Board visited the Free State National Botanical Gardens, and attended the opening of the Traditional Medicines garden.

TAXONOMY: DID YOU KNOW?

• Taxonomy involves recording a scientific description of a plant (or any living organism) and giving it an internationally recognised name.
• The record for the longest scientific name for a species of plant in South Africa is held by Leucospermum hypophyllocarpodendron. It means "Whiteseed, a tree with fruits below the leaves".
• Scientific names are in Latin but originate from many languages. South African trees have names from Arabic (Alhagi and Coffea), Amharic (Bersama) and Xhosa (Umtiza).
• The seeds of the Croton (from the Greek word for a tick) look like ticks.
• Since the Swedish botanist Linnaeus devised a system for classifying all living things in the mid-1700s, taxonomists have identified close to 1,75 million species. More than 250 000 of them are plants.