Abstract
The first extensive collections of plants in the forest zone of Ghana were made about 180 years ago in the Akwapim district by the Danes: Isert & Thonning. Akwapim (together with adjacent parts of the Accra Plains) is thus the type locality for many of the species described from their collections by Schumacher, Vahl and Willdenow (Hepper 1976). The first botanist to penetrate deeply into the forest was Cummins, who accompanied the Ashanti Expedition from Cape Coast to Kumasi in 1895–96. The earliest collectors in the Wet Evergreen forest were Burton & Cameron (1883), who looked for gold and collected a few plant specimens as a hobby. H. N. Thompson, whose report (Thompson 1910) paved the way for the establishment of a Forestry Department in Ghana (p. 68), collected some specimens of trees during his exploratory journeys through the forest. The most thorough forest collections, however, have been made by the staff of the Forestry Department: Chipp’s collections provided the basis for the Forest Herbarium, Kumasi which was formally established in 1923.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1981 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Hall, J.B., Swaine, M.D. (1981). Forest flora. In: Distribution and ecology of vascular plants in a tropical rain forest. Geobotany, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-8650-3_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-8650-3_4
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-009-8652-7
Online ISBN: 978-94-009-8650-3
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive