Knowing where plants occur, what they look like in the wild, and how they are used (and could be used) by local people is vital to plant conservation. Plants that occur only in Namibia (endemic species) and those that are mainly found in Namibia (near-endemic species) deserve special attention in national policies and development plans. During the last two years, we entered data on Namibia's near-endemic plants into a database we previously created for Namibia's endemic plants. Gathering the information for our database is painstaking and sometimes difficult work, but it is worth the effort. This knowledge will enable us to better manage and conserve Namibia's plant resources and the surrounding environment. Each plant in our database has a distribution based on where it has been found growing in the wild. Some of our information is from collections and observations by botanical experts, while others are from plant enthusiasts. Unfortunately, we have to disregard doubtful entries (e.g., a record for a plant that is not known to occur in a particular area) if they don't include clear photos or parts of the plant that we can use to verify the observation. All indigenous plants in Namibia are also included in this database; however, only basic information is available for these plants, and their distribution in Namibia has not yet been updated. Some of the older specimens in botanical collections are associated with vague locations (e.g., between Walvis Bay and Otjitambi, or on a farm that spans thousands of hectares), which cannot be georeferenced and are therefore of no use for mapping distribution. These days, we collect accurate latitude-longitude points for each plant we sample using a GPS, but only a few decades ago, handheld GPS units were not commonly available. Instead, plant collectors used quarter-degree-squares (QDS). Our database, therefore, utilises the QDS system (see Map 1 for a quick guide), which enables us to retain the older QDS records and incorporate our newer, more accurate GPS records into these blocks for easier grouping.