Rare Flowers Extinct Before Discovered

The world's rare flowering plant species worldwide may become extinct before even being discovered by scientists. A new study suggests this theory, as a rare tiny fern resembling a parsley plant who was long thought to be extinct, has been rediscovered on Ascension Island in the South Atlantic.

“Scientists have estimated that, overall, there could be between 5 million and 50 million species, but fewer than 2 million of these species have been discovered to date,” said study co-author Lucas Joppa of Microsoft Research in Cambridge, England. "Using novel methods, we were able to refine the estimate of total species for flowering plants, and calculate how many of those remain undiscovered," he added.

Scientists calculated that there are 10 to 20 percent more unknown flowering plant species than has been previously estimated. They base their work on data from the online World Checklist of Selected Plant Families at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in the United Kingdom.

Co-author Stuart Pimm of Duke University said: "We wrote the paper to help answer the obvious questions: How much biodiversity is out there, and how many species will we lose before they are even discovered?".

One of the main causes for plant extinction is habitat loss, as it threatens 30 percent of all flowering plants with extinction, according to the study. Habitat loss and climate change are both big threats to biodiversity. As for the animals, habitat loss threatens coral reefs and climate change may wipe out many lizard species.

The new rare flowering plant estimate has “enormous conservation implications, as any as-yet-unknown species are likely to be overwhelmingly rare and threatened,” Joppa said.
It is very important that we are aware of what lives on this planet other than humans.

Knowing our neighbors, plants or animals, is of particular concern now because global warming, deforestation and other human development actions that are threatening many species. Even the tiniest plant can prove essential to the good functioning of ecosystems, or may have value in terms of medical development.