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Heard a wild fact about how many plant species are still undiscovered | Botany Lovers - Free To Speak

Heard a wild fact about how many plant species are still undiscovered

I was listening to a podcast from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and they said scientists think there are about 75,000 plant species we haven't even found yet. That's like, a third of all the plants we know about. I always figured we had most of them cataloged, but nope. It makes me wonder if we're focusing too much on saving the plants we know, or if we should be putting more effort into finding the new ones before they're gone. What do you guys think is more important?

4 comments

4 Comments

rowan_wells305mo ago

That Kew podcast is a great listen. I remember them saying the 75,000 number is for flowering plants specifically, not all plants (like mosses and ferns are a separate count). It's still a huge number though. For me, the finding and the saving have to happen together, because you can't protect something if you don't know it exists. The real trick is getting the funding and people out there to do both jobs at once.

sean8545mo ago

How do we get more people to care about funding this stuff?

foster.jordan5mo ago

Okay but is it really that big of a deal if we don't find every single one? Feels like we're chasing a number for its own sake sometimes. Sure, find them if you can, but maybe the money is better spent just keeping the forests we already know about from getting cut down. The whole thing starts to sound like a science project that lost sight of the actual problem.

phoenix5733mo ago

...and rowan_wells30 you made a good point about the finding and saving needing to happen at the same time. That's probably the only way it makes sense. If we just focus on saving what we know, we might lose a species that could have cured some disease or helped with crop resilience. But if we just go on a big hunt for new plants without protecting the habitat they're in, the whole search is pointless anyway. The funding thing is the real kicker, because most people don't get why we need to spend money on looking for plants nobody's ever heard of.