On Saturday 12th of November 2016, we travelled to the wonderful region of Oku (North West Cameroon) to project "à l'échelle du Raphia" ("On Raphia and Man"). The documentary relates the importance of the African Raphia palms and follows a team of researchers investigating the biodiversity, uses and economic importance of its species across Cameroon. We were accompanied by Philippe Le Gall (Entomologist, IRD), Joseph Fumtim (co producer, IRD), Suzanne Mogue (PhD Student, Université de Yaoundé 1) and Ariane Cosiaux (International Volunteer, IRD).
We were received by the Fon (king) of Oku, His Majesty Senteih II and the prince Shey Wilfred Mbunda as well as numerous other notables of the region.
The official version of the documentary will be available by end November.
​This project was funded by IRD and Agropolis International as part of the RAPHIA project.

Our article detailing the RAINBIO mega dataset is out!
With this article we publish one of the largest datasets of tropical African plant distributions to date. It contains over 600k unique georeferenced plant occurrences for over 22k plant species. Manual and automatic specimen checking was undertaken by the RAINBIO consortium. This article is published within the framework of the RAINBIO project, funded by FRB, CESAB calls.
 Link to the project web page here where you can download the database!

Our new study focused on two central African understory palm species of the genus Podococcus. Using species distribution modeling in the past and the present combined with over 100 plastomes sequenced using NGS we found a strong correlation between climatically stable areas for the species and high unique genetic diversity. Read more here. www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1055790316301981
Congrats to Adama for his third PhD article!
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In June 2016 I went to the Monts de Cristal National Park in Gabon (as part of the AFRODYN project), basically to the same area where Hervé Sauquet and myself discovered Sirdavidia solannona back in 2012. I was walking around trying to find more individuals and populations of Sirdavidia and checking to see if it was flowering (which it was not...). After a while my Gabonese colleague, Raoul Niangadouma, and myself fell upon a medium sized tree with small flowers at the base. The species looked like an Uvariopsis, but it was "weird" looking. The flower buds were sessil and incredibly the crushed flowers and leaves emitted a strong scent of lemon. The leaves were very large for the genus too. To date, there has been no repports of lemon scent in Uvariopsis, and only a single species has sessile flowers (U. sessiliflora), and this was not that! The only other lemon scented species I know of in African Annonaceae is also from Gabon, and is Uvariodendron molundense var. citrata (Le Thomas 1969, Flore du Gabon).

At that point we knew we had a new species of Uvariopsis. It was hard to think that yet again in this same area we stumbled upon yet another new species of Annonaceae (just 100 m from the type locality of Sirdavidia), even though we were quite close to Kinguélé village and the main road! No sooner did we get back to our camp, we started to write up the article (see photo below). The idea was to show that we should not wait too much before describing and publishing new names. In our case it took less than two months between collection of the type and publication in PhytoKeys. Sure, we didn't spend all day in different herbaria going through all the material available, however, I was sure it was new and there were no names associated with this species yet. Do you agree?

The new species is called Uvariopsis citrata Couvreur & Niangadouma. The area where we collected these new species deserves an increased protection and more botanists should wander around there given its easy access and potential for new discoveries.

Link to the open access publication. We also published a new species of rattan, collected a few days later.

Amira successfully defended her Master I (Université de Montpellier II) project on Annonaceae floral evolution! In the top three of her class!
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Subject in french: Evolution De Caractères Morphologiques Floraux Chez Les Annonaceae Juss. (Magnoliales)

The 5th RAINBIO meeting in Aix, France. 23-26 may 2016. Advancing in african biodiversity studies.

I attended a field course in Oku (14-19 May), Western Cameroon, where I teached basic botany and field collection techniques to Cameroonian students. This was organized by Philippe Le Gall.

The European network of palm specialists, edition 16, held in Gran Canaria, las palmas, Canary islands, Spain. A full session was held on preliminary results of the RAPHIA project.

From the 22 till the 27 of March Roy Erkens (University of Maastricht) and myself went to collect Annonaceae in the Bayang Mbo Wildlife Reserve (Cameroon). We were mainly collecting populations of the 6 species concerned by the AFRODYN project, but took the time to observe Annonaceae and other incredible plants.

For our documentary on Raphia species of Cameroon (part of the RAPHIA project), my cousin, Foulques Couvreur (FLS Production), a professional mounter and "droner" came to Cameroon to shoot aerial videos of these spectacular palms. We filmed in the east (near Lomié) and in the north west, in Oku. This trip lasted 2 weeks, and the results were fantastic! Below some photos.