No accepted plant species meet the strict definition of “endemic to Chad” in major botanical databases and regional checklists.
Define “endemic”: a species found naturally only inside a single country. Chad’s land is mostly Sahel and Sahara. These habitats are wide and cross national borders. Plants that grow in Chad usually also grow in Niger, Sudan, Cameroon or Nigeria. This wide, continuous range makes strict country-level endemics rare. Use Kew Plants of the World Online (POWO), GBIF and the IUCN Red List to check names and ranges.
Taxonomy and survey gaps also matter. Some plants were named from Chad collections long ago but later proved to occur beyond the border, or were synonymized under wider-ranging species. Political instability and sparse fieldwork mean some local plants are under-studied, so true endemics could be hiding, but none are currently verified in the main databases. Look instead for near-endemics and localized taxa — for example, plants largely restricted to the Ennedi Massif, the Tibesti Mountains, or the Lake Chad basin that are shared with neighboring countries — and for endemic subspecies or varieties rather than whole species.
Explore these related categories instead: near-endemics of the Lake Chad basin and Saharan mountains, plants endemic to neighboring countries (Cameroon, Niger, Sudan), and ecoregion checklists for Ennedi and Tibesti. Check Kew POWO, GBIF occurrence maps, regional floras, and IUCN assessments to build a useful list of species of conservation interest.
