Realising the potential of herbarium records for conservation biology

One of the major challenges in ecosystem conservation is obtaining baseline data, particularly for regions that been poorly inventoried, such as regions of the African continent. Here we use a database of African herbarium and examples from the literature to show that, although herbarium records have traditionally been to build botanical reference “libraries” for taxonomic and inventory purposes, they provide valuable and information regarding species, their distribution in time and space, their traits, phenological characteristics, species and their physical environment. These data have the potential to provide invaluable information feed into evidence-based conservation decisions.