Abstract
Although South Africa is well known for its incredible biodiversity, targeted efforts are still required to accelerate the discovery and description of the still-unknown species in this floristically mega-diverse country. Such targeted efforts would never be effective if there is no scientifically-informed knowledge of the extent of the country’s biodiversity. In the present study, the data on current knowledge of plant richness in the country, expert taxonomists’ opinions, and statistical modelling technique was integrated to predict what might still be missing in South Africa’s flora. Depending on the approach used, the findings indicate that there currently might be 1400-1575 undescribed vascular plant species in South Africa. The current estimated value of undescribed vascular plants can be integrated into existing information because the value of the unknown vascular plant species generated from the model are close to estimates from expert opinion. It would take approximately 40-45 years to describe these unknown vascular plant species, this is based on the modelling approach...
M.Sc. (Botany)