Victor, Janine E.Klopper, Ronell RenettWinter, Pieter J.D.Le Roux, M. Marianne2024-10-032024-10-032024-08Victor, J.E., Klopper, R.R., Winter, P.J.D. et al. 2024, 'The plant checklist: building the foundation of botanical knowledge in South Africa', Taxon, vol. 73, no. 4, pp. 943-948, doi : 10.1002/tax.13169.1996-8175 (print)0040-0262 (online)10.1002/tax.13169http://hdl.handle.net/2263/98493Taxonomic research and resultant checklists play a crucial role in underpinning all biodiversity research. Compiling an inventory of plants that occur in a region or country is a complicated task that can be subject to errors and incompleteness, which in turn can hinder other fields of botanical research. South Africa has put in place a rigorous and defensible method of compiling and updating a national checklist, which can serve as a guide to any country in the process of doing so. The process of creating the checklist and significance of this is presented, and the governance, including the choice of classification followed and use of common names, is discussed. Methods for compilation and dissemination of the checklist are described.en© 2024 The Authors. TAXON published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of International Association for Plant Taxonomy. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.ChecklistConservationFloraSouth Africa (SA)SDG-15: Life on landArticle