Spotlight: The fate of the world’s plants

In 2016, Kew Gardens released a report “The State of the World’s Plants”, which includes estimates of the total number of plant species on Earth and the percentage of those facing extinction.  Pimm and Raven delve into those numbers and offer the opinion that many species will be lost before they are even discovered. They observe that it is relatively easy to preserve plant germplasm and that we should “push as hard as we can to discover missing species and preserve them. For some, it may be their last days in nature”.  (Interested in more? The 2017 State of the World’s Plants symposium is in May). Trends Ecol. Evol. 10.1016/j.tree.2017.02.014