“…The African Ottelia species occurrence data and localities were obtained from different sources, including the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF, http://www.gbif.org/, accessed on March 2020), TROPICOS (http://www.tropicos.org/, accessed on March 2020), Zambia Flora (https://www.zambia ora.com/, accessed on March 2020), hitherto published literature (Kennedy et al, 2015) and our eldworks (2018)(2019). Notably, there is substantial ambiguity present in the taxonomical literature of the genus Ottelia in Africa due to the tantamount use of various names to identify one species, e.g., O. ulvifolia, O. exserta, among others (Ferrer-Gallego et al, 2016). Therefore, to evade any misperception arising from this taxonomic uncertainty, only the literature information with listed speci c epithet according to Plant List (IPNI; The Plant List, 2010) was considered, discarding all the synonyms that refer to one species.…”