Why Plants Matter

“Most plant extinctions happen silently,” with plant populations vanishing without people noticing until the absence starts to take its toll on nature, said Eimear Nic Lughadha, a conservation researcher at Kew.

Losing plants is concerning because “we don’t know what was depending on that species in the ecosystem,” Nic Lughadha said. “And we don’t know what that species could be used for in the future.”

With the world’s remaining jungles and boreal forests still being destroyed to make way for things like livestock, palm oil plantations or urban development, at least 40% of the world’s remaining plant species are in trouble, according to Kew’s 2020 State of the World’s Plants and Fungi report.

Green planet

From the monkey-faced orchids and woody vines of the tropics to the boreal pixie-cup lichen and spearmoss carpeting the Arctic tundra, the world contains around 423,000 plant species on land — about 78 times the number of recorded mammal species.

Altogether, this greenery represents 82% of the weight of all living things.

But plants can be trickier to assess than animals, as botanists can’t follow a plant’s footprints across a savannah or listen for mating calls through a tangled forest.

As a result, scientists have assessed the extinction risk of only about 15% of species. That means we’re often not sure what the world is losing until it’s too late.

Within the plant kingdom, flowering plants – or angiosperms – make up the most diverse group at more than 369,000 species and include colorful species such as Japanese wisteria and the Eastern redbud tree.

Among ferns and mosses there are nearly 34,000 species.

Conifers, or gymnosperms, such as the Douglas fir and Western hemlock, number just over 1,100 species.

Source:

https://www.reuters.com/graphics/GLOBAL-ENVIRONMENT/PLANTS/jnpwyygywpw