Tracking the Naturalists

Angola

In 1927 Luís Wittnich Carisso, a botanist and professor from the University of Coimbra arrived in Angola to study its flora and collect plants for the Herbarium of Coimbra. In 1937 Luís Carrisso died in the Namibe desert, where 80 years before Frederico Welwitsch had found a plant unknown to science, the Welwitschia mirabilis. Some 80 years after the death of Carrisso, we retrace his journey with the goal of talking about the biodiversity of tropical plants and their ecological adaptations, from the tropical rainforest in northern Angola, to the Namibe desert in the south.