Introduction

It is generally accepted that Ethiopia is an important domestication and genetic diversification centre of crop species (Purseglove, 1968; Mooney, 1979). Likewise, it is instinctively felt that it must have a rich flora. But this is not known quantitatively, partly because efforts at documenting Ethiopian plants have been sporadic (Friis, 1982) and as a result, many plants remain unrecorded. On the other hand, hasty recording has often meant that a species goes by different names, causing double counting. The situation is made more confusing because the plant specimens collected from Ethiopia are scattered in various herbaria, mostly in Europe. The information published on them is equally scattered and in numerous European languages (Cufodontis, 1953–72). Compiling information on Ethiopian plants is thus a daunting task.

The Ethiopian Flora Project, supported financially by both the Ethiopian Government and the Swedish Agency for Research Cooperation with Developing Countries (SAREC), was launched to meet this challenge. The project is therefore building a reference herbarium and library so that, in some years’ time, information on Ethiopian plants will be found organized at one reference point in Ethiopia. The project is training young Ethiopian taxonomic botanists so that this information can be continually augmented, managed and updated. It is also writing a Flora of Ethiopia, covering the whole country, so that plant identification, both in the field and in the herbarium, becomes possible.