African Plant Diversity, Systematics and Sustainable Development

Belgian botanists played a major role in the foundation of AETFAT (“Association pour l'Étude Taxonomique de la Flore d'Afrique Tropicale”) and the first Congress of the Association took place in Brussels in 1951. Despite being a very loose association, with no proper council and no payment for membership, AETFAT grew into a successful forum for Africa botanists.

The proceedings of these congresses comprise numerous key papers for the field and faithfully reflect the development of studies of the African flora and vegetation.

This volume assembles fifty papers from the nineteenth AETFAT Congress, held in April 2010 in Antananarivo, Madagascar. Most of the twelve symposia held during the Congress are represented by the themes in these Proceedings: Global change, Conservation, Ecology and vegetation, Systematics, Phytogeography, Floristics, Databases, Sustainable use, and Ethnobotany.