Forest flora

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.