As a part of one of the global biodiversity hotspots, the Taita Hills forests are located in the southeast part of Kenya within Taita Taveta county, forming the northernmost tip of the Eastern Arc Mountains. They are highly fragmented forests embedded in a mosaic of human settlements and farms on the slopes and hilltops, resulting in the loss of 98% of the original forest cover in these hills.

Despite several botanical explorations and a substantial amount of floral and faunal research being conducted in these hills, there existed a clear lack of sufficient literature on the flora and vegetation of the area. Through a joint effort by the Sino-Africa Joint Research Center (SAJOREC) and National Museums of Kenya (NMK), several field expeditions were carried out between the years 2015 and 2019, with an effort put to expand geographical coverage to areas where previous plant collections had been scarce.

Collected specimens were deposited at the East African Herbarium (EA) in National Museums of Kenya with duplicates deposited at the Herbarium of Wuhan Botanical Garden, CAS (HIB). In addition to this, previous plant collections recorded from the Taita Hills were collated to supplement records from the field surveys to come up with a comprehensive checklist of the area.

In this study, researchers record 1594 taxa, 709 genera, and 159 families of vascular plants within the Taita Hills representing 25.33% of all vascular plants found in Kenya. Out of these, 83 are threatened, 17 are endemic, 58 are near-endemic, and 59 are exotic taxa. They also find that Euphorbiaceae, Orchidaceae, and Rubiaceae are the most important families in Taita Hills in terms of species richness, endemism, and conservation status as all of them have substantial numbers in all three categories. Although the hilltop fragments have often received more attention in terms of botanical surveys, they found that the hillslopes also exhibit a high degree of both species richness and diversity.

Despite their intensive degradation and a small area of occupancy, Taita Hills forests exhibit a high degree of plant diversity as well as rare and endemic plant species. There is a need for conservation efforts in the area both in terms of policy and research; e.g., a survey of all the forest fragments to ascertain clear demarcation boundaries thus preventing further encroachment, as well as creating a localized International Union for Conservation of Nature criterion (IUCN) RedList to ascertain the degree of threat to Taita Hills species, as some species are not under threat globally but are facing localized extinction within the Taita Hills.

The Taita Hills have been part of the local community’s culture and the people have utilized these forests for many years. More community-based conservation programs should be introduced to promote the sustainable utilization of renewable forest resources while promoting regeneration.

The result titled “An annotated checklist of the vascular plants of Taita Hills, Eastern Arc Mountain” has been published on PhytoKeys, an international journal in plant taxonomy. This work was financially supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and from Sino-Africa Joint Research Center, CAS.

So far, cooperating with the National Museums of Kenya, Wuhan Botanical Garden has completed the work on the catalogues of vascular plants of main areas of plant diversity in Kenya, including Mt. Kenya, Cherangani Hills, Aberdare Ranges, Nandi Forests, coastal forests of Kenya and Taita Hills. The results offer important original data for the work on the research and compilation of Flora of Kenya.