LIBREVILLE (Gabon), Oct 27 — Each year, Gabon’s lush rainforests yield the discovery of previously unknown plant species to botanists like Archange Boupoya — who believes that this exceptional yet largely mysterious natural wealth needs cataloguing to save.

“We cannot preserve that which we do not understand,” said Boupoya, the director of the Sibang botanical garden, a sliver of tropical forest in the heart of the capital Libreville, brimming with orchids snaking up metal columns or floating down from the shaded canopy.

“So we’re continuing still today to identify this biodiversity so that we can save it.”

Together with a thirty-some-strong team of fellow botanists, Boupoya strives to make Sibang a sort of “museum of plants” for his central African country, 88 percent of which is still covered in jungle.