Cuba has published the second edition of the catalogue of the archipelago's plants — the only one in the Caribbean region in which the entire flora has been catalogued in full for the first time, including spore-bearing plants. In total, 8392 taxa: 7504 vascular species and 888 species of mosses, liverworts and hornworts. Of these, 43,4% are endemics — species that exist only in Cuba and nowhere else on the planet.
This figure may seem like an abstract statistic, but it is worth remembering: behind it lie two years of intensive work by 86 specialists from more than 55 institutions. Working conditions were difficult, but collective will made it possible to complete the project. The catalogue is not merely a list: it runs to more than two thousand pages and 382 chapters, distributed by family and territory. For the first time, scientific names and folk names of plants, their distribution by province, the ecological associations of each species, and an updated taxonomy have been gathered under one cover — a standard that Cuban botanists had sought for decades.
According to the catalogue, 349 families, 2073 genera and almost seven thousand native species grow on the islands. Of these, 3019 are unique to Cuba. Ten families account for more than forty percent of all native flora, while ten genera concentrate almost a quarter of all endemics. This concentration of genetic diversity in a few groups makes Cuban flora especially fragile: the loss of a single genus is already a significant blow to the archipelago's gene pool.
The richest provinces are Guantánamo, Santiago de Cuba, Holguín and Pinar del Río, each containing over 2500 taxa and more than 700 endemics. These centres of diversity often remain in the shadow of international attention, even though they hold plants found only here and nowhere else in the world. The east of the island, encompassing the first three provinces, stands out in particular: there are concentrated tropical forests, montane cloud ecosystems bathed in clouds, and a unique karst landscape with mogotes — pointed hills rising out of the plain.
The catalogue has been transformed from a reference book into a tool. It provides a precise geographical and ecological baseline: where each species grows, which of them are endemic, how they are linked to specific plant formations and soils. But above all, without such a thorough inventory, any conservation plans remain on paper. In Cuba, 950 flora species are critically endangered, and most of them, lacking a precise description of their ranges and ecology, remain invisible to science and policy.
The work was carried out under difficult circumstances. Specialists found ways to continue their research when economic and political conditions pushed them towards retreat. The result is a fully updated taxonomy, refined names and geographical data for every species. Cuban botanists and conservationists now have what they lacked before: a single standard that unites the knowledge accumulated by generations of scattered researchers.
For a small archipelago, such a volume of work is a rare achievement. Most countries in the Caribbean region still do not possess such complete compendia of flora. Cuba has shown that a systematic inventory of the plant world is possible even with limited resources, if there is the organisational will to coordinate the efforts of scholars from different generations and institutions.
An accurate inventory of what grows on the land is the first step towards its conservation. And the second step is when such an inventory ceases to be narrowly specialised information and becomes the foundation of state nature-conservation policy.
