Scientists collaborating on this year's State of the World's Plant and Fungi report for 2023 have highlighted the compelling link between plants not being formally named and their risk of extinction.
It has been reported that 3 in 4 of all undescribed vascular plants (plants which have specialised tissues for transporting water, minerals and food) are under threat of extinction, with researchers discovering a relationship between the year of description and the risk of extinction.
The World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP), a recently released list that is the cumulation of 35 years' work, has been the basis of much of the report's data. Researchers used this data alongside the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List of Threatened Species to examine links between the year a plant species is formally described and its extinction risk.
The researchers found a clear relationship between the year of description and the risk of extinction, with more than 77 per cent of species described in 2020 meeting the criteria to be assessed as threatened. They found that species described more recently are more likely to meet the criteria for a higher threat category. Over 59 per cent of species described in 2020 are likely to meet the criteria for Endangered and 24.2 per cent are likely to meet the criteria for Critically Endangered.
As a three day hybrid symposium at Kew Gardens begins, scientists are calling for urgent action and for newly described species to be treated as threatened.
There are 2.5 million species of fungi globally and over 90 per cent of them are unknown.
The State of the World's Plant and Fungi report also posits that 45 per cent of all known flowering plants could be under threat of extinction. The plant families Orchidaceae (orchids), Piperaceae, which includes black pepper; Bromeliaceae, which includes pineapple; and Araceae, which includes many important crops, are among the most threatened.
This is the fifth State of the World's Plant and Fungi report and is based on the work of 200 international researchers and draws on over 25 cutting-edge scientific papers.
