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Description: Abstract This paper studies soil and plant phytoliths from the Eastern Serengeti Plains, specifically the Acacia-Commiphora mosaics from Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania. The soil phytolith transect extends 100 ha and comprises 35 samples. Botanic collection was aimed at investigating the range of species present in the study area, learning about their phytolith production and morphotype characteristics, and comparing the botanical dataset with the soil group. We studied 29 species (20 genera, 15 families). Quantification aimed at discovering relationships amongst the soil and plant phytoliths relative distributions through Chi–square independence tests, establishing the statistical significance of the relationship between categorical variables within the two populations. For the soils we tallied 10,745 phytoliths (64 morphotypes grouped into 15 classes). Plants yielded 4,310 phytoliths (morphotypes = 52, classes = 13). In topsoils, the woody phytolith group dominates all terrain ranks, and appears to increase with denser plant cover, while grass phytoliths peak in sparsely vegetated terrain. The morphotypes from woody plants are led by the spherical class. The Poaceae produce ovates, towers, and horned towers. We provide a phytolith analog for the Acacia-Commiphora ecozone, explore whether soil phytoliths mirror the physiognomy and composition of vegetation aboveground, issues of catchment size, as well as time averaging, heterogeneity, and adequate sampling methods. From a phytolith perspective, this analog comprises seven phytolith classes: Four from woody tissue and three from grasses. In addition, we created a phytolith reference collection of characteristic plants from this ecosystem that can aid in the taxonomic identification of phytoliths from ancient sediments and soils.