A dataset of occurrence records for 253 priority plant species in South Africa that are wild relatives of crops (Crop Wild Relatives, CWR). The data was collated from various sources i.e. the Botanical Database of Southern Africa (BODATSA), the Threatened Species Programme, the Millenium Seed Bank, iSpot database, TrustDB and the Acocks Database, and from fieldwork conducted by the South African National Biodiversity Institute's researchers. It includes 19,553 records. The dataset contains location data, taxa descriptive notes, redlist status. The data was pre-processed and georeferenced at varying degrees of scale due to locality description, the sources used for georefencing include, SANBI Gazetteer, GeoLocate, Google Earth, and Toposheets.